The Challenge
Heading into Q1 2026, Cult Beauty's primary objective was new customer acquisition at scale. Pinterest was identified as a key channel, with plans to shift investment toward Awareness and Consideration. But without an established always-on presence, scaling carried execution risk.
The deeper challenge was a measurement gap creating internal misalignment. Last Click was systematically under-crediting Pinterest - a discovery-led, impression-based channel where customers engage well before converting through a different touchpoint. Fospha's full-funnel MMM revealed meaningful revenue contribution that Last Click was missing entirely, making it difficult to build a confident internal case for increased investment.
The Solution
Cult Beauty was selected for the Fospha x Pinterest Deep Dive, a joint three-month programme running on a fortnightly cadence, with participation limited to brands by strategic fit.
The Deep Dive is designed to provide tailored investment support, jointly aligned recommendations from Fospha and Pinterest, and a data-driven strategy to take Pinterest performance further. Brands benefit from access to Pinterest's latest releases and best practices, alongside dedicated Fospha ad platform strategist support throughout. As a discovery-led beauty brand with an audience that maps naturally to Pinterest's core use case, Cult Beauty was a strong candidate.
The program helped to deliver three core solutions:
Full-funnel visibility: Fospha's always-on MMM gave the team a credible view of Pinterest's true contribution and identified clear headroom to scale - providing the data-backed confidence to increase investment across all three campaign objectives (Conversion, Awareness, and Consideration).
Structured scale-up with expert support: Fortnightly sessions with Fospha's ad platform strategist team meant the team wasn't just receiving data outputs - they were reviewing daily-updated measurements, assessing cross-objective performance, and iterating in real time.
Capturing delayed upper-funnel impact: Fospha's measurement revealed the downstream contribution of a Pinterest Premier Spotlight takeover that Last Click had missed entirely - demonstrating the channel’s halo effect (i.e. how upper-funnel activity drives conversions later, through other touchpoints) of brand-building investment.
The Results:
Cult Beauty’s Q1 numbers confirmed the opportunity Fospha's model had identified. Year-over-year, Pinterest revenue grew 10X on a proportionally smaller spend increase, contributing to a +5% uplift in overall blended revenue. Pinterest new customer conversions grew 11X YoY, demonstrating Pinterest was directly driving Cult Beauty's primary strategic goal, not recycling the existing base.
Efficiency held throughout. CAC fell 2% YoY despite significantly increased investment, and site visits grew 10X YoY, pointing to sustained top-of-funnel demand creation across the quarter.
At the objective level, the newly introduced Consideration campaign delivered the strongest efficiency of any campaign type - validating the case for investing across all funnel objectives drives better performance.
“Fospha’s insights have been invaluable and will really help us justify increased spend on Pinterest.” — Beatrice Spence, Senior Paid Social Manager, Cult Beauty
Further evidence from the THG Portfolio: LOOKFANTASTIC
Cult Beauty's findings are reinforced by results from LOOKFANTASTIC, another brand in the THG portfolio, which ran its own dedicated Fospha × Pinterest Deep Dive and is seeing equally strong returns from upper-funnel investment. Like Cult Beauty, LOOKFANTASTIC used Fospha’s full-funnel measurement to build confidence in Pinterest’s true contribution, and scaled Awareness spend on that basis, with standout results:
- +57% revenue growth from a +60% increase in Pinterest Awareness spend
- +3.8% Conversion ROAS growth with spend held flat, demonstrating that scaling Awareness boosted downstream Conversion efficiency
- 100% Awareness saturation headroom revealed through Fospha's incremental forecasting, confirming significant further scaling opportunity remains
Across two independent Fospha × Pinterest Deep Dives, both THG Beauty brands tell the same story: upper-funnel Pinterest investment, measured properly through Fospha’s full-funnel MMM, consistently unlocks growth that Last Click would never have justified, and the returns scale in both volume and efficiency.
“Fospha's testing gave us deeper visibility into the incremental value of awareness investment. The results reinforced Pinterest’s role as a scalable discovery platform capable of driving both brand impact and commercial performance.” — Riya Gandhi, Senior Paid Social Manager, LOOKFANTASTIC
The Bottom Line
Cult Beauty's Q1 results make a clear case for always-on Pinterest investment: 10x revenue growth and more than 11x new customer acquisition, with efficiency maintained throughout. Measured properly through Fospha's full-funnel MMM, Pinterest consistently delivers returns that Last Click would never have surfaced - a finding now confirmed across two THG Beauty brands.
Footnotes
- Impact type: Blended & Pinterest channel performance. Results represent total Pinterest performance across Conversion, Awareness, and Consideration campaign objectives unless otherwise stated.
- Time range & period comparison: Q1 2026 vs. Q1 2025, year-over-year.
- Markets analyzed: UK.
- LOOKFANTASTIC supporting data sourced from a separate Fospha × Pinterest Deep Dive program run with the client (15/01/2026 - 28/01/2026 vs. 01/01/2026 - 14/01/2026, UK).
