Written by Brook Schaaf

Pinterest acquiring tvScientific was not on my bingo card. Nor was I alone; as trade publication AdExchanger’s headline noted in its wordplay parenthetical: “(Didn’t CTV That Coming).”

As described in the press release, Pinterest is a “leading AI-powered visual search and discovery platform,” and tvScientific “a connected TV (CTV) performance advertising platform.” The deal requires regulatory approval, implying a valuation of more than $126 million on a company that raised over $91.4 million in funding (including $35 million in debt earlier this year), according to CrunchBase. Digiday cited anonymous sources who estimated the deal value to be in the range of $300-$350 million against a reported $100 million in annual revenue.

That’s a healthy turnover for an affiliate arbitrage company, which is another way to describe tvScientific: buying low and selling high through the affiliate channel with a special attribution allowance. Annoyingly but predictably, there is nary a mention of “affiliate” in the release or widespread coverage, save for AdExchanger noting tracking platform integrations and Hello Partner citing affiliate awards. While there are presumably non-affiliate advertisers, the company’s dedicated focus on selling through the affiliate channel was what put it on the radar for me, unlike its cohort competitors MNTN and Vibe, which I had never even heard of. More importantly, one suspects this is what granted it entrée to so many advertiser accounts, a story told many times over. 

And it’s likely what kept tvScientific honest, in the sense that it couldn’t afford to buy fake CTV impressions through a channel notorious for fraud. As ad researcher Augustine Fou noted years ago, “Fraudsters were making faked CTV ad calls using mobile apps like Grindr. Where they had previously manufactured fake display ads and video ads, criminals are now manufacturing fake CTV ad impressions, simply by calling it CTV ad impressions instead of display and video ads, in order to get 10X higher CPMs.” However, he also stated that “real CTV ads work.” You basically just have to buy directly from the handful of known apps, not from the ~60,000 (yes, that’s his actual count) garbage ones.

Against this backdrop, Digiday wrote, “Pinterest intends to buy tvScientific to turn its intent-rich audience data into a performance engine that extends beyond its own app and onto the connected TV screen.” More pointedly, the blog Ad Tech Explained argued, “If Pinterest is having trouble gaining credit for its advertising offering, the tvScientific acquisition is a perfect way to capture more opportunities to claim credit for a conversion.”

This touches on a huge (albeit unjust) advantage in going to a walled garden, which is the single-track without competition. In affiliate marketing, any one affiliate can be knocked out by another on a last- or other-click basis. In contrast, the walled gardens operate on what might be called an “any click” basis—or even an any-view basis.

What may be overlooked is the additional tens of thousands of advertisers tvScientific can potentially bring from the affiliate channel without compromising the premium nature of Pinterest’s self-serve ad platform. Seen this way, Pinterest isn’t so much expanding into CTV as it is importing affiliate logic into a walled garden. tvScientific brings not just performance TV, but a playbook for getting paid in an environment where credit is everything and competition is constant. That may not have been on anyone’s bingo card, but it explains the move far better than “CTV” ever could.

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