Search and social still matter, but they don’t cover the full journey—the messy middle where people shape preferences but can’t name them yet. Instead of pouring more budget into channels that are flattening, it’s time to pull a new lever: visual discovery. It helps you show up earlier, and a market response study from Mphasize suggests it can deliver stronger returns on the next dollar you invest.1
Preference often shows up as a feeling, a screenshot, a saved outfit or a half‑formed idea. Those early preferences are the start of intent, long before they show up as a keyword or an add to cart. Most media plans still expect intent to arrive as a clean keyword or a thumb‑stopping moment in a crowded feed. So you end up funding the same two lanes harder, even as growth gets more expensive.
Don’t just capture demand, create it
Most media plans can only capture demand once it is visible, not while it’s still forming. Search is great at capturing declared intent—when someone already has the words. They have named the thing, narrowed the options and are ready to ask. Social works best if you can win attention in the scroll, but you’re competing in a feed that never stops moving.
Between capturing visible demand and chasing attention in the feed, there is a stage that is hard to reach: when someone is still forming a preference. They might want “a cozy living room,” but they don’t yet know whether that means linen slipcovers, a fresh coat of paint or a new floor lamp. If your media plan only invests in the moments after they have figured that out, you’re showing up after the decision is mostly made.
How to see intent earlier, before it turns into a keyword
People often know what they like before they know how to search for it. Those half‑formed preferences are the earliest stage of intent, and that is where visual discovery thrives. When someone can start with an image instead of a keyword or a crowded results page, it’s easier to go from a spark of interest to a clear idea of what they want.
That makes discovery more efficient for them and more powerful for you. Visual discovery can cut through the noise of an endless feed, shorten the path from idea to action and surface possibilities people might never type into a search bar. In practice, that means more chances to create demand, not just capture it.
Visual discovery: seize the opportunity to influence
Most marketers are currently over-optimizing channels you already know, while under-investing in moments where consumer preferences are still forming. Future growth requires adding new levers.
Visual discovery is one of those levers. It connects inspiration to intent earlier in the decision and expands demand, not just shifts it across channels. For marketers, it unlocks new intent signals to ingest, new metrics that quantify demand creation and a more efficient path from idea to action.
On Pinterest, a visual discovery platform, people explore ideas and keep track of what they like as they go. Saves and boards turn “I like this vibe” into a trail of choices advertisers can actually learn from. That gives you a view into consideration while it is still taking shape, not only after someone has locked onto a brand name.
In the recent study from Mphasize, Pinterest sat between search and social in how it responded to more spend, which suggests it is helping create new demand rather than only catching people who were already searching.1
Visual discovery performs differently
Stop looking back at what worked before and focus on what’s next. The recent analysis from Mphasize also looked at how Pinterest compares to paid social and paid search in driving business outcomes. The model isolated each channel’s incremental contribution and then calculated two things:
ROI: the return you get from what you are spending today in that channel
mROI: the return you get from the next dollar you put into that channel, which shows where additional investment is most productive
Across both measures, Pinterest delivered an above‑average return. Pinterest’s ROI was 44% higher than paid social and 15% higher than paid search. Looking at mROI, Pinterest performed 45% higher than paid social and 88% higher than paid search.1 At current spend levels, that suggests incremental dollars on Pinterest may generate stronger returns than incremental dollars in the other channels modeled.
This points to Pinterest as a meaningful growth lever in your marketing mix modeling results, a source of incremental value across the funnel rather than just an awareness opportunity. The economics and the behavior line up. The ROI and mROI you see with Pinterest reflect how people actually explore options on a visual discovery platform. Instead of fighting for attention in the same crowded feeds and keyword results as every other channel, visual discovery moves the starting point of exploration. People begin with images giving your brand more chances to be discovered and considered in the first place.
What to do next
If your mix feels “fully allocated” but growth keeps getting harder to buy, that is a signal, not a dead end. The cost of relying only on mature channels is simple: you keep paying more to compete for the same demand and visual discovery may offer you more headroom. A mature media mix should not only defend what works. It should keep making room for what can grow.
Don’t just look at overall return on investment. Look at where the next dollar you spend is most likely to generate the strongest return, not just where you've historically invested the most. Carve out a real test budget for visual discovery. Use it to show up where preferences are still forming, not only where keywords are already fixed. You will learn quickly whether you have been leaving efficient growth on the table.
