Advertisements are inevitable, and they’ve become a lot more prevalent in recent years. Youtube will show three unskippable ads before one video, Hulu will have ad breaks that are 5 minutes long, and Instagram has begun to shove ads in-between every post on your feed. It’s really aggravating, and for a while it seemed like the only app that was a safe haven was Pinterest. You could scroll endlessly and create you boards and pins without any hindrance. I personally love to use Pinterest to unwind and escape; I’ll put on some music or a show and just go about my business, but lately, that’s proven to be difficult.
There’s so many advertisements dispersed throughout the home page now, if you’re not paying attention, it can be hard to decipher what’s a pin and what’s an ad. You click on something trying to get a closer look or save it to a board, and suddenly several different links have opened up and you’re not even on the app anymore. And because of the advertisement influx, it feels like as you’re scrolling, you see less and less pins. They’re all getting pushed out to make room for sponsorships and it’s much harder to find what you need.
This feeling has been going on for a while. I talked to some friends about it and they agreed saying that it’s really annoying and they miss how the app used to be. There’s even people on TikTok complaining and noticing exactly what I have. After a while, seeing ad after ad gets tiring, and you don’t even feel like using the app anymore.
And while the app isn’t totally unusable, it does make you open it less. Pinterest used to be so fun and it loses its sparkle by succumbing to the over-advertising that other apps have. It was one of the few apps that didn’t really feel like true “social media”; being able to just look at pictures and videos without the pressure of getting likes, validation, or attention is really nice. Sitting and making boards about future plans, outfit ideas, aesthetics, and everything else you could imaine is so freeing, but a bit of that magic has gone away.
Personally, I use the app so much, I’ve kind of gotten used to it. I’m still not fond of it, but I love the app a lot and I can’t let it go. However, I do think that if the advertising on Pinterest gets any worse than it already is, their engagement will drop even more. This app has been with me for so many years, and I’d hate to see it go down the drain.
