For years, commerce media strategies have been built around a simple assumption: search captures demand.
When shoppers know what they want, they search for it, click a result, and purchase. Because of this, search has long been one of the easiest channels for marketers to justify in a media plan. However, that assumption no longer tells the full story.
Today, search itself is evolving. Many shopping journeys begin before a shopper ever types a keyword into a search bar. Instead, they start by exploring ideas through more open-ended, visually driven search experiences—when someone is exploring ideas, planning a life moment, or engaging with content that helps them shape what they want before they can articulate it. In other words, demand is increasingly formed through visual search before it is captured through traditional search.
Visual search isn’t just another discovery channel. It represents a fundamentally different way shoppers express intent.
In a recent episode of the BRAVE COMMERCE Podcast, co-hosts Rachel Tipograph and Sarah Hofstetter spoke with Kate Hamill, VP of North America Enterprise Sales at Pinterest, about how the discovery landscape is evolving, and why commerce leaders need to rethink how demand is created, measured, and funded.
Visual Search Is Shaping Demand Earlier in the Journey
Pinterest has long been associated with inspiration. Shoppers come to the platform to discover recipes, plan weddings, redesign rooms, or explore fashion and beauty trends. Historically, that activity was categorized as upper-funnel marketing.
The modern shopper journey no longer follows a neat funnel. People discover, save, compare, and revisit ideas across multiple sessions and devices before making a purchase.
As Kate explained on BRAVE COMMERCE, Pinterest has been intentionally evolving its role in the shopper journey.
Pinterest’s strength lies in visual discovery. Unlike more direct, intent-driven search, where shoppers enter specific queries, Pinterest enables a more exploratory form of search, where shoppers can start with a general idea or “vibe” and use visual results to refine what they’re looking for over time, even if they can’t fully articulate it yet.
Many purchase decisions—especially in categories driven by taste, style, or life-stage planning—are difficult to articulate via text. Shoppers may not know the words to describe what they want, but they recognize it when they see it.
In fact, according to Kate, 39% of Gen Z Pinterest users start their searches on Pinterest1, reflecting a generation that increasingly turns to visual search and social platforms for product discovery.
For brands, this means Pinterest isn’t simply a place to generate awareness. It is a platform where shopper demand begins to take shape through visual search.
Search Gets the Credit. Visual Search Shapes the Demand.
Most marketers know that the last touchpoint doesn’t create demand, and yet media plans are still built as if it does.
Consider a typical shopper journey. A shopper browsing Pinterest discovers inspiration for a living room redesign. They save several ideas to a board, revisit them over time, and gradually refine their preferences. Weeks later, they search for a specific couch brand on Google and complete the purchase through a retailer. In many attribution models, the search query receives full credit for that sale, but the demand didn’t originate there. Traditional search captured the intent. Pinterest helped shape it earlier through visual search.
This distinction between demand shaping and demand capture is becoming increasingly important as marketers evaluate where to allocate media spend across search environments. If a platform consistently influences shopper preference before a purchase decision is fully formed, ignoring it means missing out on where demand is won.
The Measurement Gap Holding Marketers Back
If visual search platforms help shape demand earlier in the journey, why do some brands still underinvest in them? The answer often comes down to measurement.
Many organizations still rely heavily on last-click attribution, or even last-click within the same session. In this model, the final interaction before a purchase receives all the credit, regardless of what happened earlier in the journey.
But today’s purchase journeys rarely happen in a single session. Shoppers may research products across days or weeks, moving between social platforms, search engines, retailer sites, and content environments. Incomplete measurement remains one of the biggest barriers preventing marketers from fully understanding the value of these platforms, as many organizations still rely on models that fail to capture how shopper demand is created across channels.
Leading commerce organizations are increasingly adopting more sophisticated frameworks to understand the full shopper journey.
These often include:
- Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) to understand cross-channel impact and optimize media spend allocation
- Multi-Touch Attribution (MTA) to optimize performance within shorter planning cycles
- Incrementality testing to determine which channels truly drive lift rather than simply capturing existing demand
Together, these approaches provide a more realistic picture of how modern commerce journeys unfold and where shopper demand actually begins.
This measurement challenge is especially pronounced for CPG brands, where most purchases occur through retail partners rather than on brand-owned websites. Historically, that made it difficult to connect discovery moments on visual search platforms like Pinterest to real sales outcomes.
Closing that gap requires more than better attribution models. It requires commerce infrastructure that can connect media engagement directly to retailer purchase opportunities. This is where commerce enablement plays a critical role.
Through the MikMak x Pinterest integration, brands can attach Where-to-Buy commerce experiences directly to Pinterest content, guiding shoppers from inspiration to available retailers while capturing actionable commerce signals.
By connecting these exploratory, visually driven discovery experiences to retailer-aware commerce journeys, brands gain visibility into:
- Which media channels create shopper demand
- Which retailers benefit from that demand
- How visual search environments contribute to measurable sales outcomes
This creates a clearer link between visual search-driven discovery and measurable commerce performance.
Modern commerce intelligence solutions can then build on these signals to help brands understand how media spend influences commerce outcomes across retailers, identify where shopper demand is being created, and optimize future media investments accordingly.
With real-time commerce signals and predictive intelligence, brands can move from guessing where demand is created to optimizing media spend to drive profitable growth.
What This Shift Means for Media Strategy
Pinterest’s evolution reflects a broader shift happening across the commerce landscape.
Brands increasingly expect media partners to do more than generate impressions or traffic. They want environments that can move shoppers from inspiration to action while providing clearer visibility into performance.
As Kate described, Pinterest’s goal has been to bridge the gap between discovery and commerce.
For media platforms, this shift creates a significant opportunity. Platforms that can connect visual search experiences to commerce outcomes, through native commerce experiences, retailer connectivity, and actionable insights, are better positioned to win brand investment.
As brands face increasing pressure to justify every dollar of commerce media spend, the ability to connect media to measurable sales outcomes is becoming the new standard.
How Commerce Leaders Need to Rethink Media Strategy
As visual search plays a larger role in shaping shopper demand, leaders responsible for commerce growth need to rethink how media performance is evaluated and how budgets are allocated. Here are four actions to consider.
1. Rebalance investment toward demand creation
Many media plans still overweight channels that capture existing demand, simply because the results are easier to capture and tie directly to performance.
As visual search platforms influence shopper preferences earlier in the journey, underinvesting in them means missing where demand is actually shaped.
Leaders should reassess how budgets are distributed across demand creation and demand capture, not just based on attribution, but based on influence.
2. Modernize your measurement approach
No single model captures the full impact of today’s media performance. Many brands combine:
-
- Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM)
- Multi-Touch Attribution (MTA)
- Incrementality testing
Together, these frameworks provide a more complete understanding of media effectiveness. However, the brands seeing the strongest performance go a step further by connecting these signals. They leverage unified commerce intelligence platforms to understand how media spend influences outcomes across retailers, striving for more informed planning, faster optimization, and stronger performance over time.
3. Evaluate visual search platforms as demand drivers
Platforms like Pinterest shape shopper preferences when they are still exploring ideas and forming preferences.
Traditional attribution models often undervalue their impact. Commerce leaders should evaluate these platforms based on their role in shaping demand, not just capturing it.
4. Connect visual discovery to measurable sales outcomes
For brands that sell primarily through retailers, linking visual search environments to measurable sales outcomes is critical.
By connecting discovery experiences to retailer-aware commerce journeys and actionable commerce insights, brands can better understand how media spend translates into real business results and optimize accordingly.
As visual search platforms play a larger role in shaping shopper demand, how brands evaluate media performance must evolve alongside them. The brands that win will be those that can connect these early, visual discovery moments to measurable sales outcomes and optimize media spend based on how demand is actually created, not just captured.
In the next era of commerce, understanding how shoppers use visual search, especially when they can’t put it into words, won’t be optional—it will define how effectively brands grow.
See Discovery in Action
To hear the full discussion between Kate Hamill, Rachel Tipograph, and Sarah Hofstetter on how visual search, measurement, and AI are reshaping commerce strategy, listen to the full BRAVE COMMERCE episode.
Brands interested in activating Pinterest with retailer-aware commerce experiences can learn more about the MikMak x Pinterest integration or connect with our team to explore how to launch shoppable campaigns.
Media platforms looking to connect discovery experiences to measurable commerce outcomes can explore how MikMak helps publishers transform engagement into attributable sales.
1Source: Adobe, Pinterest is emerging as a go-to search engine, April 2025. Adobe’s methodology: Adobe surveyed 800 consumers and 200 business owners on March 12, 2025, to understand how people use Pinterest as a search engine. Of the respondents, 16% were Gen Z, 51% were millennials, 25% were Gen X, and 9% were baby boomers. The gender breakdown was 51% male, 48% female, and 1% non-binary. Only responses from those who use Pinterest in this way were included. All survey data is self-reported
