Anonym brings privacy-protected measurement to Pinterest advertisers

Anonym today announced a partnership with Pinterest, allowing advertisers to measure campaign effectiveness on the visual discovery platform while maintaining control over proprietary datasets through privacy-preserving technology.

The collaboration addresses a persistent challenge in digital advertising: brands hold valuable first-party data that remains underutilized because activating it on major platforms requires sacrificing data governance controls or accepting technical complexity that outweighs potential benefits. According to the announcement, this data often goes unused "not because it lacks value, but because leveraging it at scale while maintaining proper control has required too much complexity, risk, or internal lift."

Anonym, co-founded by Graham Mudd who serves as SVP Product at Mozilla, positions itself between Pinterest and advertisers to enable privacy-preserving insights. The company uses end-to-end encryption, trusted execution environments, and differential privacy to facilitate measurement without requiring advertisers to relinquish data control or modify existing administration practices.

Technical infrastructure enables controlled data activation

The measurement solution operates through a technical architecture designed to keep advertiser data encrypted while processing insights. Trusted execution environments create isolated computational spaces where data analysis occurs without exposing raw information to either Pinterest or Anonym. Differential privacy adds mathematical noise to aggregated results, preventing individual-level data from being reverse-engineered while preserving statistical accuracy for campaign measurement.

This approach allows brands to understand Pinterest's impact on conversions and incremental lift using datasets they previously could not deploy on the platform. According to the announcement, advertisers can "put tightly controlled data to work and better understand Pinterest's impact on conversions and lift" while maintaining advertiser-defined parameters for data handling.

The technical setup reportedly requires weeks rather than months, avoiding the heavy engineering investment typically associated with custom measurement integrations. Anonym handles the computational infrastructure, eliminating the need for advertisers to build data science capabilities specifically for Pinterest campaign analysis.

Pinterest measurement gap addressed for regulated industries

Pinterest attracts users with high purchase intent who use the platform for planning and inspiration before taking action. The company describes its audience as coming to "discover ideas, get inspired, and plan what's next," creating what it characterizes as a brand-safe environment where inspiration converts to measurable outcomes.

However, certain advertisers—particularly those in financial services, healthcare, and retail sectors with strict data governance requirements—have historically struggled to measure Pinterest performance using their most valuable datasets. Regulated industries often maintain customer data under frameworks that restrict how information can be shared with third-party platforms, even for measurement purposes.

The Anonym partnership specifically targets this measurement gap. Preeti Farooque, Senior Director of Measurement at Pinterest, stated that the collaboration "allows advertisers with tightly governed data to measure that journey with greater clarity and confidence." The reference to "journey" connects to Pinterest's positioning as a platform where users move from inspiration to action, a transition that advertisers want to quantify.

For Pinterest, the partnership represents a competitive response to measurement capabilities available on platforms like Meta and Google, which have developed various solutions for privacy-compliant measurement. Privacy-preserving measurement has become increasingly important as browser tracking restrictions and platform policy changes have degraded cookie-based attribution methods.

First-party data activation becomes platform differentiator

The announcement positions first-party data as an underutilized asset across the advertising industry. Graham Mudd characterized advertiser datasets as "extremely valuable" but noted they have been "underused because activating them has been operationally hard or just too risky."

This framing reflects broader industry trends around first-party data as third-party cookies face deprecation. Google's repeated delays of third-party cookie removal in Chrome have created uncertainty, but the long-term trajectory points toward increased reliance on advertiser-owned data rather than third-party identifiers.

Major platforms have responded by building clean room environments and privacy-enhanced technologies. Amazon Marketing Cloud offers SQL-based analysis of campaign data within Amazon's infrastructure. Meta's Conversions API allows server-to-server event sharing under advertiser control. Google has developed various solutions including Privacy Sandbox proposals and enhanced conversions.

Anonym's approach differs by sitting between the advertiser and platform rather than being platform-owned infrastructure. This intermediary position theoretically allows the same privacy-preserving measurement technology to work across multiple platforms, though the Pinterest partnership represents the company's first publicly announced platform collaboration since Mozilla acquired Anonym in 2024.

Measurement focus excludes targeting and activation

The partnership announcement emphasizes measurement and insight rather than audience targeting or campaign activation. According to the release, the collaboration "focuses on measurement and insight," opening "the door to greater visibility and stronger performance on Pinterest that were not possible before."

This limitation matters because many advertiser first-party data challenges involve not just measurement but also audience targeting using customer lists, purchase behavior, or proprietary segmentation. The announcement does not indicate whether Anonym's technology will expand to enable privacy-preserving audience targeting on Pinterest, or if the partnership remains confined to post-campaign measurement and attribution analysis.

The measurement-only scope aligns with regulatory trends that increasingly scrutinize how advertiser data gets used for targeting. The European Union's Digital Services Act imposes restrictions on certain targeting practices, while platform policy changes have progressively limited targeting capabilities even absent specific regulatory requirements.

By focusing on measurement rather than targeting, the partnership avoids some regulatory complexity while still addressing a significant advertiser need. Campaign measurement informs budget allocation decisions and platform investment strategies, making it valuable even without enabling new targeting capabilities.

Privacy infrastructure supports compliance positioning

Anonym describes its solution as "regulation-supportive," providing advertisers with "tools to help meet evolving global privacy requirements, supporting responsible data use as rules change." This positioning reflects the increasingly complex regulatory environment for digital advertising data practices.

The General Data Protection Regulation in Europe, the California Consumer Privacy Act and its successor the California Privacy Rights Act, and various state-level privacy laws in the United States create overlapping requirements for how companies collect, process, and share consumer data. GDPR enforcement has intensified, with data protection authorities imposing significant fines for violations.

Privacy-enhancing technologies like those Anonym employs—differential privacy, secure multi-party computation, and trusted execution environments—receive favorable treatment in some regulatory frameworks. These technologies can enable data analysis while limiting individual identification risks, potentially satisfying requirements for data minimization and purpose limitation under frameworks like GDPR.

The announcement does not specify which regulations the technology helps advertisers comply with, or whether regulatory agencies have reviewed or endorsed the approach. However, the positioning suggests Anonym sees regulatory compliance as a selling point beyond just technical capability.

Competitive landscape for privacy-preserving measurement

The privacy-preserving measurement market has attracted multiple technology providers offering various approaches. LiveRamp's Data Collaboration Platform uses identity resolution within clean room environments. InfoSum operates a decentralized architecture where data never leaves source systems. Habu focuses on financial services and retail with federated learning capabilities.

Each approach makes different trade-offs between measurement granularity, technical complexity, and privacy guarantees. Some solutions prioritize maximum analytical flexibility, allowing advertisers to run custom queries against combined datasets. Others emphasize simplified setup and standardized reporting at the cost of analytical depth.

Anonym's positioning emphasizes minimal advertiser effort—"set up and reporting can be completed in weeks, no heavy engineering or data science investment needed"—suggesting the company targets advertisers who want measurement insights without building specialized technical capabilities.

The Pinterest partnership gives Anonym access to a platform with approximately 500 million monthly active users globally, according to the company's most recent public disclosures. This scale creates opportunities to demonstrate privacy-preserving measurement at meaningful volume, though the announcement does not disclose how many advertisers will initially have access to the capability or what onboarding requirements exist.

Platform incentives and ecosystem implications

For Pinterest, the Anonym partnership addresses a competitive weakness relative to larger platforms. Meta and Google have advantages in measurement capabilities because of their extensive logged-in user bases, cross-platform presence, and historical investment in measurement infrastructure.

Pinterest lacks the logged-in ubiquity of Meta or the cross-web presence of Google, making deterministic measurement more challenging. The platform has previously offered measurement solutions including Pinterest Tag for conversion tracking and partnerships with third-party measurement vendors, but gaps remain for advertisers with complex data governance requirements.

By enabling privacy-preserving measurement through Anonym, Pinterest can potentially attract advertising budgets from brands that previously could not justify investment without clear performance visibility. The announcement suggests this explicitly, noting that the partnership allows advertisers to "explore new investment opportunities on Pinterest by finally leveraging datasets that were previously hard to use."

This reflects a broader platform strategy around making Pinterest more measurable and accountable for performance marketing dollars, not just upper-funnel brand awareness. The company has progressively enhanced conversion tracking, attribution, and reporting capabilities to compete for direct-response budgets that historically concentrated on platforms with stronger measurement infrastructure.

Industry trajectory toward privacy-first infrastructure

The announcement positions privacy-preserving measurement as "the foundation of the next era of marketing" rather than a compliance burden, attempting to reframe privacy infrastructure as enabling rather than limiting.

This framing has become common among advertising technology providers as the industry adapts to browser tracking restrictions, platform policy changes, and regulatory requirements that make legacy measurement approaches less viable. Google's Privacy Sandbox proposals, Meta's aggregated event measurement, and various clean room offerings all represent attempts to maintain advertising effectiveness within tighter privacy constraints.

Whether privacy-preserving measurement can fully replace deterministic tracking remains uncertain. Academic research has demonstrated that differential privacy can preserve statistical accuracy for aggregated insights while protecting individual privacy, but implementation details matter significantly. The amount of noise added, the granularity of available breakdowns, and the minimum data thresholds for reporting all affect how useful privacy-preserved measurements become for advertiser decision-making.

Anonym's claim that it enables "clear insights into campaign lift and attribution, powering better investment decisions" will require validation through advertiser adoption and reported satisfaction. The announcement does not include case studies, performance benchmarks, or advertiser testimonials demonstrating measurement quality, which would provide evidence for the claimed capabilities.

Unanswered questions about adoption and performance

The partnership announcement leaves several significant questions unanswered. Pinterest has not disclosed which advertisers will have access to Anonym measurement capabilities, whether availability will be limited to specific verticals or spend tiers, or what technical or contractual requirements advertisers must meet to participate.

Pricing and commercial terms remain undisclosed. Measurement solutions can be structured as platform-included capabilities, standalone paid services, or percentage-of-spend fees. How Anonym monetizes its intermediary position between advertisers and Pinterest could affect adoption rates, particularly among mid-market advertisers for whom additional measurement costs might be prohibitive.

The announcement also does not specify what types of insights the measurement solution provides beyond general references to "conversions," "lift," and "attribution." Advertisers typically want granular information about performance across audience segments, creative variations, placement types, and other dimensions. The level of detail available through privacy-preserving measurement affects its strategic value compared to alternative measurement approaches.

Implementation timeline remains vague. The announcement states setup "can be completed in weeks," but does not indicate when the capability will become generally available to Pinterest advertisers or how many brands will initially participate.

Mozilla's advertising technology strategy

The partnership represents progress in Mozilla's strategy to build privacy-respecting advertising technology following its 2024 acquisition of Anonym. Mozilla, known primarily for the Firefox browser, has articulated a vision for advertising that balances commercial viability with user privacy protections.

Graham Mudd joined Mozilla through the Anonym acquisition and has been instrumental in articulating the company's advertising strategy. His background includes senior product roles at Meta, giving him insight into measurement challenges from both the platform and advertiser perspectives.

Mozilla's positioning as a privacy-focused organization theoretically provides credibility for privacy-preserving advertising technology, though some privacy advocates have questioned whether effective advertising and meaningful privacy can coexist. The company has attempted to differentiate between privacy-invasive tracking and privacy-respecting measurement, arguing that eliminating all advertising data flows is neither realistic nor necessary.

The success of the Pinterest partnership could determine whether Mozilla's advertising technology strategy expands to additional platforms or remains confined to niche applications. If major advertisers adopt Anonym for Pinterest measurement and report satisfactory results, the technology could gain traction across the industry. If adoption remains limited or measurement quality disappoints, the approach may struggle to achieve meaningful scale.

Timeline

• December 23, 2025: Anonym announces partnership with Pinterest to enable privacy-preserving measurement for advertisers with tightly governed datasets
• 2024: Mozilla acquires Anonym to build privacy-respecting advertising technology
• May 2024: Google delays third-party cookie deprecation in Chrome, extending timeline for industry privacy transition
• 2023: Meta removes detailed targeting options in response to regulatory and policy pressures
• 2021: iOS 14.5 introduces App Tracking Transparency, fundamentally changing mobile measurement
• 2020: Google announces plans to remove Similar Audiences, signaling shift away from third-party data

Summary

Who: Anonym, a privacy technology company owned by Mozilla and co-founded by Graham Mudd, partnered with Pinterest to provide measurement capabilities for advertisers. The solution targets brands with tightly governed first-party data in regulated industries like financial services, healthcare, and retail.

What: The partnership enables privacy-preserving campaign measurement on Pinterest using advertiser first-party data through encrypted infrastructure. Anonym's technology uses trusted execution environments, end-to-end encryption, and differential privacy to process measurement insights without exposing raw advertiser data. The solution focuses on conversions, lift, and attribution analysis rather than audience targeting.

When: Anonym announced the partnership on December 23, 2025. The announcement does not specify when the measurement capability will become generally available to Pinterest advertisers or provide an implementation timeline beyond stating setup can be completed "in weeks."

Where: The measurement solution operates on Pinterest, a visual discovery platform with approximately 500 million monthly active users. Anonym serves as an intermediary layer between Pinterest and advertisers, processing measurement analysis in isolated computational environments that prevent data exposure to either party.

Why: The partnership addresses the challenge that valuable advertiser first-party data remains underutilized because deploying it on major platforms typically requires sacrificing data governance controls or accepting significant technical complexity. As third-party cookies face deprecation and privacy regulations intensify, brands need privacy-preserving ways to measure campaign performance using their most valuable datasets while maintaining compliance with internal and external data handling requirements.