Expanded targeting uses visual signals from your ad to broaden your targeting and reach additional people on Pinterest who may be interested in or searching for relevant ideas. Expanded Targeting is available for all campaign types and objectives and you may see improvements in reach, click through rates and total spend.
For example, a snack company might target topics like “recipes” and “snacks” but not think of targeting “road trips”. Without the company selecting “road trips”, expanded targeting will put their ads in front of people interested in or searching for related ideas.
If you’re planning to use expanded targeting in addition to other types of targeting, you’ll want to consider how they’ll interact.
Your potential audience size is based on all of the targeting criteria you select and your total audience size will increase with expanded targeting turned on.
However, expanded targeting is related to interests and keyword targeting and will not affect your other targeting parameters such as location, gender, language, placement or age targeting. For example, if you are only targeting women in the United States, extended targeting will not expand beyond this audience.
Below are examples of how expanded targeting may affect your potential audience size.
| Types of targeting | Expected behavior | Reach impact |
|---|---|---|
| Expanded targeting only (no interests, keywords, or audiences) | Reach people using visual and written signals from your ad, without requiring interests/keywords. | High potential reach – total MAU in the country selected. |
| Expanded targeting + some keywords and/or interests | Reach people who are interested in, searching for or engaging with a topic. Expanded targeting adds visual signals from the ad in addition to the selected interests and keywords. | Increases potential reach beyond input keywords + interests. |
| Expanded targeting + audiences | Reach people within an audience (customer list, site visitor, engagement, or actalike). | Expanded targeting does not affect audience lists – turning it on will not expand the audience beyond the list. |
| No expanded targeting (also no interests, keywords, or audiences) | Reach any Pinner on the platform. | High potential reach – total MAU in the country selected. |
Expanded targeting is switched on by default for new campaigns in Ads Manager, but you can switch it off at any time.
- Enter YES to switch expanded targeting on
- Enter NO to disable expanded targeting
Learn how to
Metrics for expanded targeting are listed in the reporting table with your other campaign results. Results that use expanded targeting are labeled (Automatic) in the table.
If you want to set up multiple different kinds of targeting on Pinterest or edit current campaign targeting, you can learn more in our