When it comes to social media, it pays to be positive, according to Pinterest CEO Bill Ready. In an interview with Yahoo Finance Live from the 2023 Cannes Lions International Festival, Ready explains why positivity is good business, not just for Pinterest, but the advertising industry as a whole.

Video Transcript

[MUSIC PLAYING]

BRIAN SOZZI: Part of the cool thing here at Cannes Lions is chance meetings. So we have the Yahoo beach house right next to the Pinterest, really epic beach house. And I'm here with CEO Bill Ready. Bill, good to see you.

BILL READY: Yeah, great to see you as well.

BRIAN SOZZI: Not in the studio and not talking about earnings for a change.

BILL READY: Yeah, thanks for dropping by.

BRIAN SOZZI: I like it. So talk to us about the next iteration of that positive mention or that positive focus or a positive place to be on the internet. What does that look like next for you guys?

BILL READY: Yeah, one of the things that we've announced here at Cannes is the inspired internet pledge, which is-- we've been designing positivity into the platform of Pinterest for years, but we really think that positivity, and particularly more positive outcomes in emotional well-being, really needs to become a standard for the social media industry.

So we announced that here at Cannes with the Digital Wellness Lab, that's really asking all of social media, advertisers, agencies, the whole industry to really come together and support more positive emotional well-being outcomes, to commit to measuring those outcomes, delivering better outcomes over time, and then sharing learnings with each other. Because, really, emotional well-being ought to be a mandate for all of us, not something that we're competing on, but actually a mandate for the industry that we all need to do better on.

BRIAN SOZZI: This is a wildly opposing message. I hear a focus on positivity from you, and on the other side, there's Twitter trying to round up new business here in Savannah. Are you winning new business because of your message you're trying to get through?

BILL READY: We've seen really phenomenal response from advertisers. You know, it pays to be positive on Pinterest. And we see the advertisers really want to be part of that. If you're building a great brand as an advertiser, you want to build your brand on positivity as well. And so we're seeing that advertisers and brands want to be part of that.

And as we're delivering great performance, a great full funnel experience, which is quite unique to our platform as well, we're helping them connect with users in moments that matter for those users in an environment that's positive, where users are getting to create a life they love. So that's inherently positive. And we're seeing that pays for advertisers to connect in those moments as well. So we've seen really great reception to it.

But we aren't perfect either. We are committing that not only are we going to measure ourselves today, but going forward and commit to ongoing improvement in those areas. Because as much as we've tuned for positivity, nobody's perfect, and we want to make sure that we're learning and getting better both as Pinterest as well as with the industry.

BRIAN SOZZI: Each time I have talked to you in your CEO capacity, I've asked you about the state of the ad market. And each time, it has sounded incrementally a little bit better. Now, we're contained in here, we're having drinks, we're on a beach, everything seems rosy. The economy might be growing 10%, who knows? But what's your sense of the ad market looking at the back half of the year, at least from being on the ground in an event like this and talking to all the key people?

BILL READY: Well, I mean, what I would say is, like, I think it's hard to predict the macro. I think the ad market still has spots. There are bright spots in the ad market, I think there are other parts of the ad market that are challenged. So there's, sort of, still puts and takes across those.

But it's good to see that there are bright spots that are emerging there. And so I think that's encouraging across the industry. But I think even more than that, it's encouraging to see the things that we're doing with Pinterest are resonating with advertisers, the full funnel nature as we're delivering more performance for advertisers, and again, bringing that positivity for them that they're valuing, and also their value, because the people on the platform value it.

We see that people come to Pinterest, users come to Pinterest really as an oasis away from the toxicity of much of social media. So advertisers value it, but users value it too. And so we're seeing that really cut through.

BRIAN SOZZI: Two more, Bill is an in-demand guy here at this conference. I literally have about three more minutes with him, that's how these meetings go. AI, have you been inspired by anything that anybody is doing here with AI and building it back into your own business?

BILL READY: Well, I mean, I think the possibilities with AI are so phenomenal. AI is a core competency for us. We have really been leaned into next generation AI. If you think about things like our personalization, which is really unique to our platform in terms of what people do on the platform, people curate on our platform. They associate products.

How do people think about how they're going to put a room together, how are they going to put an outfit together? AI is only as good as the signal upon which it's acting. And we have really unique signal, because people come to Pinterest to go curate all the things they're interested in and make these great product associations. And that's really letting us do some unique things.

So for example, our personalization model today is 100 times larger than what it was just a year ago. And so the power of the recommendations we're able to make because of that built on top of next-gen AI capabilities, GPUs and things like that, that's letting us make recommendations that users are saying exceed 95% plus relevance for them. So that's just one example of, sort of, the power of where AI is going and how we're incorporating it. So I think that is great.

The other thing, just coming back to the positivity point, I think as AI gets more and more powerful, I think a really important question is the ethics of the AI, what people ask the AI to do. And I think, again, it's an important moment for people to commit to using AI for positive outcomes. And so there's so much limitless potential.

But it can be used for good or not for good, and it's a great moment to commit to those things. That's certainly how we think about it with human-centric AI, bringing that into the way people use the product, doing things that sort of respect the user and help honor what users want to do versus just, sort of, serving users things that maybe based on what triggers them the most or those kinds of things. So we see lots of opportunity and potential in that, but also an important moment for people to be clear about what they want to do with the AI. And clearly, for us, that is using it for positive outcomes.

BRIAN SOZZI: Before I let you go, last 30 seconds. I realized coming into this, I've been following you in your CEO journey and so have the investors on the Yahoo Finance platform. You hit the one-year marker coming up--

BILL READY: Coming up on one year, yeah.

BRIAN SOZZI: What have you learned as a leader in that one-year mark, and how are you different?

BILL READY: Well--

BRIAN SOZZI: You still look great.

BILL READY: Thanks. Maybe a few more gray hairs. But it's been a great year. You know, yes, there's been a lot of choppiness in the market, things like that.

But if you look at our platform, we've returned to user growth, we're deepening engagement with engagement growing double-digit percentage points, our ad impressions were up 30% plus year on year this past quarter. So the business is growing, growing quite nicely. And so even as ad demand has fluctuated in the market, the supply on our platform has grown 30% plus, which is really a reflection of both deepening engagement from our users as well as delivering great products for advertisers that's helping them to engage with users.

So it's been a remarkable year. Shopping's coming more on to the platform, so we feel great about all that. But we have so much more to do. So look forward to talking about that as well.

BRIAN SOZZI: I've been following your journey so closely, Bill, that I got the same shoes as you. We both have the memo, the white shoe memo here in Cannes Lions. Always-- it's part of the uniform.

BILL READY: Yeah, I'm glad we could coordinate.

BRIAN SOZZI: All right, good to see you. Get back to work.

BILL READY: Thanks so much.

BRIAN SOZZI: I'll talk to you soon.

BILL READY: All right.

BRIAN SOZZI: Brian Sozzi out.