After a particularly poor performance on its fourth-quarter earnings, Pinterest CEO Bill Ready attempted to favorably compare the digital pinboarding site to the popular AI chatbot ChatGPT.
Trying to highlight its potential as a unique search destination, Ready asserted that the site sees larger search volume than ChatGPT. According to third-party data, ChatGPT sees 75 billion searches per month, while Pinterest sees 80 billion searches and generates 1.7 billion monthly clicks, he said.
“That makes us one of the largest search destinations in the world. And importantly, more than half of those searches are commercial in nature, compared to, I think . . .approximately 2% [of ChatGPT searches],” Ready added.
Pinterest in the fourth quarter missed expectations on both revenue and earnings per share, reporting $1.32 billion in revenue versus $1.33 billion expected, and earnings per share of 67 cents, compared to the 69 cents projected. It also forecast that first-quarter 2026 sales will come in between $951 million to $971 million, below the $980 million expected.
The company blamed its shortfall on larger advertisers pulling back on spend, particularly in Europe, and a new furniture tariff implemented in October that caused issues within the home category. It said those trends could worsen in the first quarter.
Surprisingly, Pinterest missed on earnings despite a user base that’s growing faster than expected. The company reported monthly active users were up 12% year-over-year to 619 million, when Wall Street had forecast 613 million users.
Shares dropped 20% in after-hours trading.
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Pinterest has long struggled to translate the high usage of its platform into ad dollars, as its users often go to Pinterest to plan and dream, not shop and buy. That challenge could become even more acute in the AI era, especially if advertisers shift their dollars to platforms where intent to buy is clearer — such as chatbot requests that ask for product recommendations.
When asked about how Pinterest will navigate the shift toward AI-powered shopping, Ready pointed to the company’s visual search, discovery, and personalization features, which he said would point users to relevant products when they open the app.
“We’re helping them complete those commercial journeys without having to type in a single prompt,” he said, also noting that Pinterest had benefited from an easier checkout flow that came from its partnership with Amazon. He said customers didn’t yet seem ready to allow an AI to make a purchase on their behalf, but said Pinterest would be ready if that time came.
“That’ll actually be one of the easiest parts of the commercial journey to solve,” he claimed.
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