Pinterest Ads success story · Car brand

How Mazda tied Pinterest ads to car sales and found a 43X return on ad spend.

Name: Overtop Media Digital Marketing
Address: 933 Louise Ave Suite 101-18, Charlotte, NC, 28204, US
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People use Pinterest to plan big purchases, and a car is one of the biggest. Mazda went past clicks and quote requests by matching its Pinterest campaigns to actual vehicle sales, down to the model, and the numbers made the case.

Business: Mazda
Market: United States
Goal: Connect ads to actual car sales

One hand passing a car key to another, the moment a car sale closes

The results.

Return on ad spend measured against actual vehicle sales. Dealer hand-off actions compared with Mazda’s own benchmark for Pinterest.

43Xreturn on ad spend, matched to car sales
30%higher lift in dealer hand-off actions than Mazda’s Pinterest benchmark

An automotive sales-matching study comparing Pinterest campaigns with sales, United States, September 2024 to January 2025. The dealer hand-off result comes from Pinterest’s own data, United States, 2025.

The challenge.

Linking online advertising to cars sold at a dealership is one of the hardest problems in automotive marketing. Website visits and quote requests are easy to count, but they do not say which ads actually led to a purchase.

Mazda was already running full-funnel campaigns on Pinterest, because people use it to plan major purchases. It wanted a better read on the big picture: which digital touchpoints were truly influencing final vehicle sales.

Pinterest illustration of conversions measured across app, web and offline sales

What they did.

Full-funnel campaigns · Retargeting and engagement targeting · Offline conversions from sales data

General first, specific later: Shoppers might first see ads with general vehicle information, then be retargeted over time with specific models and offers.
Found the strong leads: Retargeting and engagement targeting focused on people who had shown interest, encouraging quote requests and dealership contacts.
Sales data sent to Pinterest: An automotive data specialist compiled sales across Mazda’s channels and uploaded it to Pinterest’s offline conversion solution. Pinterest also accepts file uploads and the Conversions API.
Down to the model: The matched data showed how campaigns influenced sales of specific models, so budget decisions could follow real sales results.

Why it worked.

Our read on the decisions behind the numbers, and what any business can take from them.

Sales, not proxies: A quote request is a hope. A sold car is a fact. Measuring against sales showed the true value of a channel that clicks alone undercount.
A long journey, followed: Car buyers research for weeks. Moving from general content to specific offers kept Mazda present at each stage.
Better data, better spend: With model-level results, budget can move to the vehicles and messages that actually sell.
Confidence to invest: Beating its own hand-off benchmark by 30% gave the team evidence, not opinion, for its Pinterest budget.

How we would run this play for your business.

You do not need a national budget to use the same ideas. This is how Overtop Media Digital Marketing puts them to work in our pinterest ads management.

Connect your CRM to your ads: We match leads and sales from your CRM or dealer system back to the ads that produced them. Our analytics services handle the setup.
Stay with the shopper: Retargeting moves people from browsing to specific models, services or offers as they get closer to buying.
Count the actions that matter: Calls, test-drive requests and dealer visits are tracked as goals, so the system optimizes for them, not for cheap clicks.
Catch the search that follows: Car shoppers who see you on Pinterest search next. Our Google Ads management and Pinterest ads management work as one.