After Pinterest announced plans to acquire tvScientific in December last year, it only took two months for the transaction to officially close in February.
Another two months later, Pinterest announced on Monday that the tvScientific platform will now have access to its new parent company’s user audience data for CTV ad targeting.
The new integration marks the first time Pinterest’s users will be retargetable somewhere other than Pinterest, let alone for use in streaming TV environments, the company’s leadership team shared during a press breakfast held in New York City last week.
Pinterest’s audiences becoming addressable via tvScientific’s platform is the “first step in our product roadmap,” said Chip Jessopp, VP and GM of programmatic ad sales for Pinterest. “The longer-term strategy is to be able to enable advertisers to optimize that Pinterest intent signal, both on- and off-platform.”
In the meantime, tvScientific will increase its performance capabilities and its ability to scale, said Jason Fairchild, CEO of tvScientific.
Why CTV, anyway?
The news of Pinterest’s tvScientific acquisition was surprising at first blush, but not necessarily shocking. After all, the CTV ad marketplace is expected to exceed $45 billion and surpass linear TV in 2028, said Pinterest Chief Business Officer Lee Brown, citing a recent eMarketer forecast.
So, of course, that kind of growth attracts a lot of interest.
Fairchild said that CTV represents more of a lean-back, big screen experience than online advertising, but is also more addressable than linear TV – which dovetails nicely with Pinterest’s own recent efforts to rebrand itself as a performance marketing platform.
Brown also said that since he joined Pinterest in January this year, the brand and agency clients he’s met with have told him they used to regard the platform as an upper-funnel opportunity. Now, they’re seeing more mid- and lower-funnel possibilities as well – which, not coincidentally, feels similar to the rhetoric surrounding CTV’s growth as a performance channel.
In fact, said Brown, Pinterest doesn’t see itself as a social media platform anymore, but as a search and shopping platform with a pronounced visual component.
“Over half of our audience is Gen Z, and they’re not coming here to talk about politics,” he said. Instead, they’re coming to Pinterest “with intent” about specific subjects that they’re passionate about and with plans for purchases.
Even still, agencies are still using social media budgets to spend on Pinterest, as opposed to search or paid discovery, Brown admitted. Which is partly why aligning with tvScientific on CTV investments may unlock more ad spend moving forward.
High intent, high performance
By establishing its users as an addressable, high-intent audience, Pinterest also wants to expand beyond what Brown called the “2012 mood board mason jar wedding” image that many people associate with early Pinterest years.
His impulse is understandable, given how the now-outdated perception can be seen as limiting for potential new advertisers.
For example, Fairchild noted that modern-day Pinterest attracts many people interested in video game content. Presumably, mobile and casual gaming companies that focus on direct response metrics, like app installs, would be interested in reaching these exact kinds of audiences.
In tvScientific’s initial tests with the Pinterest audience, Fairchild said, every $100 worth of ad spend produced 27% higher outcomes compared to other third-party audience segments the company has used in the past.
Another more formal case study with LG led to a 73% increase in unique household reach and a 24% lift in net new customers for the television manufacturer, Jessopp also shared.
“Performance is very much correlated to what audience you put an ad in front of,” said Fairchild. “And if they’re high-intent audiences, they’re going to perform.”
