A luxury brand is testing its first-party audience against interest-based targeting on Pinterest, using the same video creative for each. Mid-flight, it notices that both approaches are beating benchmarks, but the Interest-based ad group isn’t scaling.Which action should the media planner take based on these findings?

In digital advertising, "scaling" issues within a specific ad group do not necessarily mean the strategy is a failure, especially when that group is beating benchmarks. The Benefit of Diversification: Even if the interest-based ad group has a smaller reach than the first-party audience, it serves a distinct purpose: incremental reach. By keeping both active, the brand ensures it is reaching its known customers (first-party) while simultaneously introducing the brand to "active planners" (interest-based) who haven't interacted with them yet. Avoid "Over-Optimization": Pausing a high-performing (but small) ad group is a common mistake. If you allocate all budget to the first-party list, you risk audience saturation and frequency fatigue, where the same people see the same ad too many times, leading to a spike in CPA. The Pinterest Path to Purchase: Pinterest users often start with broad interests and narrow down to specific brands. Interest targeting captures users at the start of that journey, feeding the "top of the funnel" so that the first-party lists (which rely on site visits) can grow over time.