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Nobody reads your Pinterest description

Pinterest states descriptions don't appear in the feed, in search, or when a Pin is viewed up close. They feed the ranking algorithm.

Pinterest's own specification states that descriptions "do not appear when viewing the Pin in the home feed or search feed" and "do not appear for ads when viewed up close". Separately, that "descriptions are used by our algorithm to determine relevance for delivery".

It's a retrieval field wearing the clothes of a copy field.

What follows from that

• Persuasion belongs in the image and in the first 40 characters of the title. The title field takes 100, but only about 40 show in feed, and 30 for Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Arabic.
• Writing 800 characters of sales copy in the description is invisible work.
• A test that varies the description is testing something no user will see. Write it to be found, not to be read.

And 2:3, not square

Pinterest warns that Pins with an aspect ratio greater than 2:3 "might get cut off in people's feeds". That's the opposite of the square-is-safe habit every other platform trains into you.

See the Pinterest ad specs, quoted with sources.