Promote a Pin from Pinterest: what to prepare in the video or image

Pinterest introduced Promote a Pin on March 24, 2026 as a way for businesses and creators to put budget behind a Pin they already published. The announcement says you choose the goal, budget, audience and duration, and that the US rollout would take place over the coming weeks, with iOS purchase through Apple in-app purchase mentioned.

The announcement does not publish creative specs and does not say whether video Pins qualify, so this post stays on what is stated: the Pin you promote is judged by the same Pin specs, which is why the file should be right before you spend.

What the pages state

Three pages give the facts. The newsroom post describes the product. The Pin specs page describes what a Pin can be. The ads product specs page describes the stricter rules for a paid video ad, which are not the same thing as a promoted organic Pin, so do not assume they apply.

Prepare the Pin before promoting

Start with length. A Video Pin runs from 4 seconds, so a clip shorter than that cannot be a Pin. Video trim cuts a range from a Sume-hosted clip, and precision: exact re-encodes frame-accurately as H.264 yuv420p, one of the codecs Pinterest lists. Each trim costs $0.02.

Then read the file back. A probe-only video inspect call (frames: false) returns the probe without stills, which you can compare with the table above before publishing.

curl -X POST https://api.sume.com/v1/video-inspect \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUME_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: probe-only-001" \
  -d '{"video_url":"https://media.sume.com/artifacts/artf_demo/ad.mp4","frames":false}'

What to wait for

Because the video eligibility is unstated, test with one Pin in your account when the option appears, and record what Pinterest shows on the promote screen. Do not build a campaign plan around a rule the page does not give.