At a glance
Spend on Pinterest keywords or interest targeting that produced zero conversions in the 30-day window AND have had at least 7 days of serving (giving Pinterest’s 30-day attribution tail a chance to start). Sums dollars on these “dead” terms. The most common single quick-win lever for ROAS on Pinterest, but with a caveat: Pinterest’s long attribution window means a “wasted” keyword today may still earn engagement-attributed revenue in 30+ days. Be patient before pruning.
| What it counts | SUM(spend) over keywords/interests where conversions = 0 AND keyword.first_serve_date < (today - 7 days) AND keyword.status = ACTIVE. Account currency, after micros conversion. |
| API endpoint | POST /v5/ad_accounts/{id}/reports, level: KEYWORD and level: INTEREST > metrics: SPEND_IN_DOLLAR_MICRO, TOTAL_CHECKOUT, TOTAL_CHECKOUT_VALUE_IN_DOLLAR. Filter to zero-conversion rows on the engine side. |
| Ad-format scope | All paid Pinterest formats with keyword or interest targeting (Standard Pin, Shopping, Carousel). Idea Pin video uses interest targeting; Shopping uses both keyword and product-feed-driven targeting. |
| Cost basis | Whatever the parent campaign bids on (CPC / CPM / oCPM). The card sums dollars regardless. |
| Conversion attribution | 30-day click + 30-day engagement default. The 7-day “settle” filter is intentional: many “zero-conversion” keywords on day 5 will earn an engagement-attributed conversion by day 25. Without the 7-day filter, this card would massively overestimate waste. |
| Engagement vs click | A keyword can have many saves but zero conversions; that’s not waste, it’s planning-phase awareness. The card uses combined TOTAL_CHECKOUT (click + engagement) as the conversion definition to avoid mistaking save-rich-but-not-yet-converting Pins for waste. |
| Audience skew context | Wasted spend on Pinterest reads heavier on poor-audience-fit verticals (B2B SaaS, mens-only, industrial) where many keywords genuinely never convert. On well-fit verticals (decor, fashion, wedding), wasted-spend > 5% of total spend usually means keyword bloat from over-targeting, prune the long tail. |
| Currency | Account base currency, single per ad account. |
| Bot / invalid traffic | Pinterest’s IVT clawback reduces wasted-spend retroactively (a bot click cost refunded means the spend on that keyword drops 7-14 days later). The card refreshes on Pinterest’s revisions. |
| Time window | 30D (last 30 days; the 7-day settle filter is internal to the calculation). |
| Alert trigger | > $0 on any keyword that’s been active for at least 7 days. The threshold is intentionally aggressive because waste compounds: if you have £200 of waste this month, that’s £2,400 a year. |
| Roles | owner, marketing, finance |
Calculation
Calculated automatically from your Pinterest Ads data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.Worked example
A UK home decor brand running Pinterest Shopping with broad keyword + interest targeting. Account currency: GBP. The 30-day window covers 02 Apr 26 to 01 May 26.| Keyword / interest | Days active | Spend (30D) | Saves | Clicks | Conversions | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
living room decor (kw) | 30 | £820 | 4,200 | 1,840 | 38 | Performing |
farmhouse style (kw) | 30 | £640 | 3,800 | 1,420 | 24 | Performing |
bedroom design (interest) | 30 | £580 | 2,400 | 980 | 16 | Performing |
cottagecore aesthetic (kw) | 22 | £180 | 2,100 | 480 | 0 | Wasted (interest, no convs) |
boho wall art (kw) | 30 | £140 | 920 | 240 | 0 | Wasted |
wedding centerpiece (kw) | 18 | £120 | 1,400 | 320 | 0 | Wasted (poor product-fit) |
kitchen renovation (kw) | 12 | £80 | 480 | 110 | 0 | Wasted (planning-time, no immediate intent) |
mens room ideas (kw) | 24 | £45 | 80 | 18 | 0 | Wasted (audience mismatch) |
| Total wasted (5 keywords) | - | £565 | 4,980 | 1,168 | 0 | - |
| Total spend (this period) | - | £12,000 | 70,600 | 13,560 | 566 | - |
| Wasted as % of total | - | 4.7% | - | - | - | - |
- £565 (4.7%) is wasted spend. That’s middle-of-the-pack for a fashion/decor brand. Under 3% is excellent; 5-10% is typical; over 10% means you have keyword/interest bloat. Annualised, this £565 is roughly £6,800 you could redirect to performing keywords.
cottagecore aesthetichas 2,100 saves and 480 clicks but zero conversions. That’s the trickiest category, lots of interest but no purchase. Three possible reasons: (a) the audience is researching / planning (cottagecore is a long-cycle aesthetic), (b) your products don’t actually match the aesthetic (your “cottage-themed” range may be too modern for the audience expecting truly rustic), (c) the landing page is wrong for the saver intent. Don’t immediately pause; let it run another 14 days so the engagement window can credit any late conversions, then if still zero, prune.wedding centerpieceshows 1,400 saves but 0 conversions because this brand sells home decor, not wedding-specific products. Pinterest’s broad-match grabbed the keyword but the audience-product fit is wrong. Pause immediately; this one won’t recover.mens room ideasis the audience-mismatch tell. Pinterest’s audience is ~60% female and decor-skewing-feminine; mens-room-themed keywords on a fashion-forward decor brand earn poor engagement (only 80 saves) and zero conversions. Pause immediately; no amount of waiting fixes audience mismatch.- The 7-day settle filter is doing real work here. Two more keywords (
scandinavian living roomandbotanical prints) earned their first conversion on day 8 and day 11; without the filter, they would have been flagged “wasted” on day 5 and prematurely paused. Patience matters on Pinterest. Other ad platforms (Google, Meta) can be pruned within 3-5 days; Pinterest needs 7-14.
- Wasted < 3% = lean keyword set, good discipline.
- Wasted 3-7% = normal; review monthly.
- Wasted 7-15% = bloat; do a quarterly prune of all zero-conversion keywords with > £50 spent.
- Wasted > 15% = either audience-mismatch problem (wrong vertical) or broken Pinterest Tag (no conversions counted, which makes everything look wasted).
- Saves high + conversions zero on a single keyword = wait 14 more days before pruning.
- Saves low + conversions zero + > 7 days old = prune immediately, audience mismatch.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
| Card | Why pair it with Pinterest Wasted Spend |
|---|---|
| Pinterest Total Spend | The total. Wasted ÷ Total = waste percentage. Watch the ratio; absolute waste rises with budget growth even when efficiency is unchanged. |
| Pinterest Zero-Conversion Spend | The campaign-level companion. Wasted Spend is keyword-level; Zero-Conversion is whole-campaign. Read together to find the diagnosis layer. |
| Pinterest Top Keywords by Spend | Inverse view: where money is going and converting. Compare against this card to ensure spend concentration matches conversion concentration. |
| Pinterest Top Keywords by Conversions | The performers. Use to identify keywords worth doubling spend on after pruning waste. |
| Pinterest Search Terms Report | Search-term-level detail, useful when broad-match keywords are wasting spend on irrelevant queries. Add negatives based on this report. |
| Pinterest Conversion Lag | Companion sanity check. If conversion lag is unusually long, “wasted” keywords may just be late-attributing. Wait before pruning if lag is climbing. |
| Pinterest ROAS | The bottom-line lever. Pruning £500 of wasted spend without losing revenue lifts ROAS proportionally. |
| Google Ads Wasted Spend | Peer ad-platform metric. Same idea, different attribution mechanics. Useful for cross-channel waste audits. |
Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look in Pinterest Ads Manager: Pinterest Ads Manager > Reporting > Performance > Keyword/Interest level > group by Keyword > columns:Spend, Total checkout (or your conversion goal). Sort by Spend descending and filter to “Total checkout = 0” rows. The list of keywords is the same set this card sums, with one difference: Pinterest’s UI does not have the 7-day settle filter, so it will show MORE rows than this card (including freshly launched keywords still in their attribution-window grace period).
Why our number may legitimately differ from Pinterest’s UI:
| Reason | Direction | Why |
|---|---|---|
| 7-day settle filter | Ours lower | We exclude keywords active < 7 days because Pinterest’s 30-day attribution tail means many of them will earn their first conversion on day 8-14. Pinterest’s UI counts them as zero-conversion immediately. The settle filter is the right behaviour for an alerting card. |
| Time zone, account TZ vs UTC | Boundary days off | Pinterest reports in the ad account’s TZ; this card uses UTC. Affects the “today” cohort of keywords; the 30-day window is largely insensitive. |
| Long attribution window backfill | Ours lower over time | A keyword that reads “wasted” today will quietly drop off this card if a conversion lands within the 30-day engagement tail. The Pinterest UI shows the same self-correcting behaviour. Don’t act on this card the same day; wait 7 days for stability. |
| Engagement vs click reporting variance | Either | If the attribution selector in Pinterest’s UI is set to “click only”, more keywords will appear wasted (engagement-attributed conversions get hidden). This card uses the account default (combined click + engagement), the more honest read. |
| API rate limits and ingest lag | Ours lower for last 4-6 hours | Async report API, refresh ~4 hours. The Pinterest UI is closer to real-time. |
| Card | Expected relationship | What causes legitimate divergence |
|---|---|---|
google_ads.gads_wasted_spend | Peer waste read. Different attribution mechanics. | Google Ads typically reads higher waste because its 7-day click + 1-day view window is shorter, fewer late-attribution conversions to “rescue” keywords. |
facebook.meta_ads_wasted_spend | Peer. | Meta’s 7d-click + 1d-view; similar caveat to Google. |
shopify.total_revenue filtered to Pinterest UTM | If Pinterest “wasted” keywords show commerce-platform Pinterest-tagged revenue, the Pinterest Tag is missing conversions. Check Pinterest Tag health if any “wasted” keyword has substantial UTM revenue. | Tag misconfiguration, server-side redirect dropping the click ID, ad-blocker rates above platform average. |
Known limitations / merchant FAQs
Should I immediately pause every keyword on the wasted-spend list? No, not on Pinterest. The 30-day click + 30-day engagement attribution window means many “wasted” keywords have saves piling up that will convert weeks later. The 7-day settle filter on this card already excludes the freshest keywords, but you should still wait 14 days from the alert before pausing if the keyword has > 100 saves. If saves are also low (< 50 in 14 days), pause immediately, that’s audience mismatch, not slow attribution. Is my Pinterest Tag broken if everything reads as wasted? Possibly. If wasted spend is over 30% of total spend, check: (1) Is the Pinterest Tag firing on your purchase confirmation page? Use the Pinterest Tag Helper Chrome extension to verify. (2) Is the Tag configured to sendpurchase_value? If only purchase events are sent, conversions count but ROAS appears as zero. (3) Has there been a recent site re-platform? A migration from Shopify > BigCommerce often breaks the Tag. (4) Is your tracking blocked by Consent Mode v2 or ad-blocker proportion above 30% of traffic? Pinterest does not yet have full Consent Mode integration, so high-ad-blocker audiences naturally read more “wasted”.
Why does Pinterest read 5% wasted while Google reads 2% wasted on the same brand?
Pinterest is a decision-time channel, so genuine waste there overlaps with “audiences not yet ready to buy”. Google’s intent-time queries either convert quickly or genuinely waste. The honest comparison is over a 90-day window, not 30; over 90 days, Pinterest waste typically converges on the Google number because the engagement tail finishes attributing.
What’s the cost of a £100 wasted-spend keyword if I leave it running?
£100 in the current 30-day window plus probably £100/month going forward, around £1,200/year per keyword. The cost compounds because Pinterest’s algorithm rebalances impressions toward keywords that are serving even when they’re zero-converting (the algorithm sees “spend = good” without conversion context). Pruning aggressively prevents the algorithm from spending more on dead terms.
My wasted spend went from 4% to 12% this week, what happened?
Most likely causes, in order: (1) Pinterest Tag broke, conversions stopped counting, all keywords appear wasted. Check Pinterest Tag Helper. (2) Audience saturation, you’ve exhausted the high-converting cohorts and are now into less-engaged ones. Check Pinterest CTR Trend for a CTR drop. (3) New campaign launch, freshly launched keywords are pre-7-day-settle but somehow appearing on the list (rare, indicates settle-filter bug). (4) Seasonal mismatch, summer fashion keywords running into autumn season; the audience moved on but the keywords didn’t.
Is wasted spend on Idea Pin (video) measured differently?
Slightly. Idea Pin uses interest targeting, not keyword. The card sums interest-level spend on interest cohorts with zero conversions in 30 days. The 7-day settle still applies. Idea Pin is more often “wasted” by definition because it’s an awareness format; expect 8-15% of Idea Pin spend to read wasted on average. Don’t pause on this card alone for Idea Pin; check engagement-per-dollar and 60-day-trailing ROAS instead.
Does this card include keywords I’ve manually paused?
No. Only status = ACTIVE keywords with > 0 spend in the window. Paused keywords stop appearing the day they’re paused. If you pause a wasted keyword today, it disappears from this card tomorrow but the dollars already spent stay in Pinterest Total Spend.
Should I rebuild keyword lists from scratch quarterly?
On Pinterest, yes more often than other platforms. Pinterest’s algorithm benefits from keyword/interest evolution; stale lists stop performing as the audience taste shifts (especially in fashion, decor, wedding). A quarterly review where you prune all zero-conversion keywords and add 5-10 new ones based on Search Terms Report findings is healthy. Annual reviews are too slow for trend-driven verticals.
Multi-account aggregation, how does waste roll up?
The card aggregates across same-currency child accounts in the same Pinterest Business Manager. Mixed-currency setups need per-account treatment. The 7-day settle filter is applied per keyword, not per account.