Channel comparison
Microsoft Advertising vs Pinterest: feed requirements compared
Microsoft Advertising and Pinterest sit at opposite ends of how demanding a feed specification can be while using the same vocabulary. Microsoft wants the Google taxonomy and a strict identifier chain and can reject items outright; Pinterest treats nearly all of that as optional and cares about the image instead.
Where the two specifications diverge
The 4 attributes one channel treats differently from the other. Everything else is identical and is listed further down.
| Attribute | Microsoft Advertising | What that means | |
|---|---|---|---|
| brand | Required in some cases | Optional | Stricter on Microsoft Advertising. |
| gtin | Required in some cases | Optional | Stricter on Microsoft Advertising. |
| item_group_id | Required in some cases | Optional | Stricter on Microsoft Advertising. |
| mpn | Required in some cases | Optional | Stricter on Microsoft Advertising. |
Differences a table cannot show
Requirement levels are the easy part. These are the differences in values, structure and delivery that break a feed copied from one channel to the other.
Microsoft rejects where Pinterest shrugs
Microsoft expects the gtin, mpn and brand chain and can reject items that fail it, which is stricter even than Google's warning behaviour. Pinterest treats all three as optional. The same own-brand catalogue can be almost entirely rejected on one channel and entirely fine on the other.
Only one of them uses a product taxonomy
Microsoft accepts Google's product category taxonomy and uses it for placement. Pinterest does not take that attribute at all and classifies from the title, description and image. The taxonomy mapping is required work for one and dead weight for the other.
Market structure differs
Microsoft works from one catalogue per market you configure in Merchant Center. Pinterest expects a separate data source per country and language pair. A multi-market store ends up with a different number of generated files for each channel.
Both fetch daily, but Pinterest lets you choose when
Neither offers a sub-daily schedule, so both are structurally a day behind at worst. Pinterest lets you pick the fetch time, which means regeneration can be aligned to it precisely. That control is the only scheduling advantage either channel has.
The image carries different weight
On Microsoft the image is a thumbnail in a text-led ad unit. On Pinterest it is the entire listing, displayed large, where a landscape theme crop visibly underperforms a vertical one. The same image_link value is adequate on one channel and a missed opportunity on the other.
Reusing one feed for the other channel
What actually has to change, in the order it is worth doing.
-
Publish the Microsoft mapping to Pinterest unchanged
Everything Pinterest needs is already in a Microsoft feed, and the extra attributes are ignored rather than rejected. Confirm ingestion first, then improve.
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Split the feed per country and language
One data source per market, each with its own currency, prices and URLs. Microsoft handles markets in its own settings, so this structure does not exist yet in your pipeline.
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Pick the Pinterest image deliberately
Check what image_link resolves to today. If it is a theme-resized landscape image, map a portrait or square alternative for Pinterest only, from a metafield or a second product image.
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Regenerate immediately before the Pinterest fetch
Set the fetch time in Pinterest, then schedule generation just ahead of it. The two channels should not share one regeneration slot, because their fetch times are unrelated.
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Keep identifiers and the taxonomy in the output
Pinterest ignores both, but they cost nothing to carry and they are what keeps one mapping serving both channels. Stripping fields per channel is how two feeds start diverging.
Every attribute, side by side
All 16 attributes documented in this knowledge base, as Microsoft Advertising and Pinterest each treat them.
| Attribute | Microsoft Advertising | |
|---|---|---|
| availability | Required availability | Required availability |
| brand | Required in some cases brand | Optional brand |
| condition | Optional condition | Optional condition |
| custom_label_0 | Optional custom_label_0 | Not documented here — |
| description | Required description | Required description |
| google_product_category | Recommended google_product_category | Not documented here — |
| gtin | Required in some cases gtin | Optional gtin |
| id | Required id | Required id |
| identifier_exists | Optional identifier_exists | Not documented here — |
| image_link | Required image_link | Required image_link |
| item_group_id | Required in some cases item_group_id | Optional item_group_id |
| link | Required link | Required link |
| mpn | Required in some cases mpn | Optional mpn |
| price | Required price | Required price |
| sale_price | Optional sale_price | Optional sale_price |
| title | Required title | Required title |
Frequently asked questions
Is a Microsoft Advertising feed enough for Pinterest?
Yes, in terms of attributes: Pinterest requires strictly less. The two changes worth making are splitting the feed by country and language, and choosing a better-shaped image for a channel where the image is the listing.
Does Pinterest use google_product_category?
No. Microsoft accepts the Google taxonomy values, Pinterest does not take the attribute at all and classifies items from the title, description and image instead.
Which channel is stricter about product identifiers?
Microsoft, by a long way. It expects the gtin, mpn and brand chain and can reject items outright, while Pinterest treats all three as optional.
How often do these two channels fetch a feed?
Both once a day. Pinterest lets you choose the time, which is worth using: regenerate shortly before the fetch rather than on an unrelated schedule.
Both specifications in full
- Microsoft Advertising Microsoft Advertising runs product ads across Bing, Yahoo and the Microsoft Audience Network from a catalogue uploaded to Microsoft Merchant Center. Its feed specification is closely modelled on Google's, which makes it the cheapest additional channel to launch once a Google Shopping feed already exists.
- Pinterest Pinterest turns an uploaded product feed into Product Pins, which are shoppable pins that carry live price and availability from the catalogue. Its feed specification borrows Google's attribute names, and its distinguishing requirement is that every item needs a genuinely usable image, because the image is the entire unit of discovery on Pinterest.
Errors on either channel
- Missing value: GTIN The "Missing value: GTIN" issue means a channel believes a product has a manufacturer-assigned barcode but the feed did not supply one. On Shopify it almost always traces back to the variant barcode field, which is optional in the admin and therefore left empty across large parts of most catalogues.
- Image link cannot be crawled An image crawl failure means the channel could not retrieve the file at image_link, or retrieved it and judged it unusable. On Shopify the URL itself is rarely wrong, so the cause is usually a rate limit hit during a first full crawl, a temporary CDN response, or an image whose content breaks policy rather than one that is genuinely missing.
Related concepts
- Product identifiers Product identifiers are the values that let a sales channel recognise that your listing and someone else's describe the same physical product: a GTIN, or a manufacturer part number together with a brand. They matter because a channel that can identify a product can attach reviews, specifications and competing offers to it, and one that cannot has to treat your listing as an unknown object.
- Feed scheduling Feed scheduling is the arrangement where a sales channel fetches a feed from a fixed URL on a repeating timetable instead of the merchant uploading a file. It matters because the interval between regenerations is the window in which a channel can be wrong about a price or a stock level, and most mismatch disapprovals are caused by that window being too wide rather than by a bad mapping.
Primary sources
Channel specifications change. These are the official documents this page is based on.