Pinterest Ads connects from creavio’s own Pinterest business access - a picker that opens in place, with no Pinterest sign-in screen and no swap into the client’s session. This is the path that was exercised end to end most recently, so the steps below describe something that has actually run, not something that should work.
What has to be true first
Pinterest takes two steps on its side, and the second one is the one people miss. First, the client’s Pinterest business and creavio must have an accepted partnership. Second, the client must assign the specific ad account to that partnership. A partnership on its own grants no access to anything - it only makes the assignment possible. If the partnership is accepted but no advertiser has been assigned, creavio sees the partnership and still lists nothing.
Steps
- Open the client, then go to Connections.
- On the Pinterest Ads row, click Connect. The picker opens in place.
- Pick the advertiser. Each one shows its name and currency. Advertisers already connected to another client are marked and cannot be selected.
- Confirm.
Make sure you are on the Ads row
Pinterest appears twice in Connections: once under Ads and once under Social. Only the Ads row uses creavio’s business access. The Social row still opens the client’s own Pinterest authorization. If you click Connect and get a login screen instead of a picker, you are on the Social row - that is expected behaviour, not a fault.
If the list is empty
An empty list means creavio’s Pinterest access currently reaches no advertiser for this client. Almost always that is the missing second step above: the partnership exists but the ad account was never assigned to it. That is a task inside the client’s Pinterest business settings, and no amount of retrying the picker will change it.
What is different about Pinterest, and why it matters
Pinterest issues one credential that rotates: every time it refreshes, the previous one immediately stops working. Two independent copies of it cannot both survive - the first refresh on either would silently kill the other. So creavio stores that credential in exactly one place and points every connected client at it, instead of writing a copy into each client’s workspace.
Day to day you will not notice. There are two consequences worth knowing:
- Revoking creavio’s Pinterest access disconnects every connected client at once, not only the one you are looking at.
- A client’s Pinterest connection holds no credential of its own. Disconnecting one client does not affect any other, and does not affect creavio’s access.
Status note - last measured 24 August 2026. This flow was run against production on that date: creavio’s credential listed the advertisers it can reach, one was bound to a client workspace, and a live Pinterest read then ran through that client’s connection with no client login at any point. One part has not been exercised in production yet - the automatic credential refresh, which is not due until late September 2026. If a Pinterest connection starts reporting that an account is not ready around or after that date, tell support rather than reconnecting; that is the case worth catching.