Pinterest Buys tvScientific at Rumored $300M Valuation
December 19, 2025 by Chris Erwin
RockWater Roundup
Join our community of builders and investors, and sign up here for the most widely-read newsletter on M&A and strategy insights for the creator economy and digital agencies.
We help you build and invest better.
————
Today we discuss Pinterest’s acquisition of tvScientific, a connected TV performance advertising platform. We analyze deal details, strategic rationale, valuation multiples, when mobile intent meets living room scale, and the new IM + CTV advertiser pitch.
Let’s break it down…
–TARGET: tvScientific–
Overview
- Performance advertising platform built specifically for Connected TV
- Makes TV advertising accessible and measurable for brands of all sizes, offering a self-managed, cost-per-outcome (CPO) solution
- Uses a direct 1:1 match (like a fingerprint) to reliably link an ad seen on the TV to an action taken on a phone or computer
- Raised $93M in funding to date
- Founded in 2020 by Jason Fairchild (CEO), Bill Gross, and David Koye (CPO)
- 185 associated members on LinkedIn
- HQ in CA
Founding Story
- Jason Fairchild, an ad tech pioneer, previously was an early exec at GoTo.com and co-founded programmatic giant OpenX
- Concept for tvScientific was born from a simple question: “What if we could do for TV what we did for paid search in 1999?”
- In 2020, Fairchild teamed up with Idealab founder Bill Gross—the “father of paid search”—to apply the results-driven logic of search engines to the television screen
- Goal was to “democratize” TV advertising, moving away from legacy “reach and frequency” metrics and toward digital precision that allows a brand to measure exact ROI
Company Highlights
- Platform reaches 95% of ad-supported video-on-demand (VOD) audiences
- Enables real-time optimization and attribution that rivals search and social platforms
- Provides strong incrementality and organic lift for brands, including MTN Ops which saw a 7.19x spike in site visits
- Successful client outcomes include Photobucket driving 1,775+ new paid subscribers and Dell achieving a 50% ROAS with 56% net-new customer acquisition
- Sources cited by Digiday estimate tvScientific was generating approximately $100M in annual revenue, and net $50M
Business Lines / Service Offerings
- Outcome-Based Media Buying…
- Allows advertisers to pay only by the measurable outcome that matters most such as cost-per-install or cost-per-sale
- AI-Powered Optimization…
- Features a custom bid optimization engine that leverages massive data sets to make optimal buying decisions for each ad impression
- Cross-Screen Attribution & Analytics…
- Provides transparent insight into campaign performance, targeting, and attribution (e.g., matching CTV ad exposure to specific web conversions)
Capital Markets History:
- Dec 2025: Acquired by Pinterest, a visual search and discovery platform
- May 2025: Issued $35M in debt financing from Silicon Valley Bank
- Feb 2025: Raised $26M in Series B led by NewRoad Capital Partners
- Feb 2024: Raised $9M in early stage funding round led by S4S Ventures
- Apr 2022: Raised $20M in Series A led by Norwest Venture Partners
- Mar 2021: Raised $3M in seed funding round led by Aperiam Ventures and Idealabx
–BUYER: Pinterest–
Overview
- Leading AI-powered visual search and discovery platform where people find inspiration and shop products
- Shifting from just a discovery tool to a proactive shopping assistant, helping users transition from initial inspiration to finding exact product they want
- Founded in 2010 by Ben Silbermann (Former-CEO), Evan Sharp, and Paul Sciarra
- 4,666 employees per 2024 10K
- HQ in SF
Founding Story
- Pinterest began with a pivot from a struggling mobile shopping app called Tote, which Ben Silbermann and Paul Sciarra launched in 2009 to replace paper catalogs
- While Tote failed to gain traction, Silbermann noticed a unique behavior: users weren’t just buying; they were obsessively collecting and saving images of things they liked
- Drawing inspiration from his childhood hobby of collecting insects and stamps, Silbermann teamed up with Evan Sharp—who designed the grid layout—to build the “catalogue of ideas” that Pinterest would become
Company Highlights
- 600M+ monthly active users interact with 15B+ boards
- Monetization via a suite of performance ad products including Pinterest Performance+
- Achieved 9th consecutive quarter of record MAU growth
- Gen Z cohort comprises over 50% of user base
- AI-driven Pinterest Performance+ suite delivers 24% higher conversion lift for retail advertisers using automated campaigns
- ScottsMiracle-Gro achieved a 60% lower cost-per-engagement and Hyatt’s Thompson Hotels saw 2.3x more clicks using multi-objective campaigns
Business Lines / Ad Offerings
- Shoppable Formats…
- Ad units designed to streamline path to purchase
- e.g. Shopping Pins which link directly to a product page on a brand’s site, and Collection Ads which showcase one featured video/image and multiple related products
- Interactive & Immersive Ads…
- Leverages proprietary tech, such as their Try-on Pins that allows users to virtually apply products, to drive engagement and inspiration
- Standard Performance Ads…
- Core ad formats boosted to scale reach and awareness
- e.g. Promoted Pins and Promoted Video Pins, which are standard visual units that appear natively in feed
Stock Performance
- Listed on NYSE: PINS
- $25.88 as of 12/17/2025
- Up 1% MoM
- Down 17% YoY
Financials (USD)
(per company filings. FY ends Dec 31)
- Sep 2025…
- Q3 2025 Revenue: $1.0B
- Q3 2025 Operating Income: $58M
- Q3 YTD Total Revenue: $2.9B
- Q3 YTD Total Operating Income: $19M
- FY 2024…
- Revenue: $3.6B, up 19% YoY
- Adj EBITDA: $1.0BM, up 51% YoY
- Adj EBITDA Margin: 29%
- Net Income: $1.9B, up from negative YoY
Valuation
(per stockanalysis.com as of 12/17/2025)
- Mkt Cap: $17.5B
- C&CE: $2.7B
- Total Debt: $205M
- Enterprise Value: $15B
- Enterprise Value Multiples…
- LTM 3Q 2025 LTM Revenue: 3.7x
- LTM 3Q 2025 LTM EBITDA: 48.8x (per Pitchbook)
- LTM 3Q 2025 LTM ADJ EBITDA: 12.5x (per co filings)
- 2024 Revenue: 4.1x
- 2024 EBITDA: 82.6x (per Pitchbook)
- 2024 ADJ EBITDA: 14.6x (per co filings)
Capital Markets History:
- Dec 2025: Acquired tvScientific, a connected TV performance advertising platform
- Mar 2024: Issued $2M in early stage funding to Getinside, a retail media platform developer
- Jun 2022: Acquired The Yes, an e-commerce platform, for $87M
- Dec 2021: Acquired Vochi, an AI video editing application, for $46M
- Apr 2019: Raised $1.4B in IPO on NYSE
–DEAL DETAILS–
Overview
- Announced December 11, 2025
- Financial terms were not disclosed
- Transaction is subject to regulatory review, implying a valuation at or above the FTC reporting threshold of $126.4M
- Sources cited by Digiday estimated deal value in $300–$350M range
Strategic Rationale
- Pinterest helps brands understand what people plan to buy – this deal extends that insight onto TV screens for first time
- tvScientific makes it possible to see whether TV ads actually lead to purchases, not just views
- Together, the two platforms let brands run and measure ads across phones, computers, and TVs in one system
- Owning this technology allows Pinterest to control how TV ads are bought and measured, rather than relying on third-party vendors
- Strategically, the deal helps Pinterest compete for TV ad budgets by giving brands clearer proof of the results from TV ads
- “People plan and shop across multiple screens, and advertisers need performance solutions that reflect that reality,” said Bill Ready, CEO of Pinterest, on how this deal enables TV measurement with the clarity advertisers expect from digital channels
Post-Deal Operations
- tvScientific will operate within Pinterest’s ads organization, with its performance CTV technology integrated into Pinterest’s broader ad stack
- Pinterest will roll out outcome-based CTV buying and measurement to advertisers alongside its existing performance products
- The combined offering will scale across enterprise, DTC, and mid-market advertisers with unified reporting across screens
- tvScientific leadership and team are expected to remain engaged to support integration and product expansion
–WHAT ELSE I FIND INTERESTING–
Benchmarking Valuation Multiples
- Digiday sources estimate the tvScientific acquisition value in the $300–$350M range.
- With estimated revenue of ~$100M (net ~$50M), the implied valuation sits at 3.0–3.5x EV / Revenue (or 6.0–7.0x Net Revenue).
- This estimated pricing is in line with market. For context, median EV / Revenue multiples for ad-tech were roughly 2.7x in Q4 2023 (Finerva), the latest aggregated public data available we could find.
- More recently, Mediaocean acquired Innovid at about 3.2x EV / Revenue in February 2025 (Press Release), based on a $500M enterprise value and Q3 2024 LTM revenue of $152M.
- Assuming the estimated figures are accurate, our takeaway is that Pinterest bought a proven, revenue-generating performance infrastructure play at a fair market price, rather than paying a massive “visionary” premium for early-stage tech.
The “Performance” Convergence: Mobile Intent x Living Room Scale
- We’re witnessing the collapse of the wall between “Social Performance” (Mobile) and “Brand Awareness” (TV).
- Historically, these were separate budgets managed by separate teams. But advertisers no longer care about the device; they care about the user journey.
- This deal highlights the new holy grail: Unified Identity. Pinterest holds the “Planning Graph” (high-intent data on what users want to do/buy on mobile). By plugging that into tvScientific, they can retarget that specific mobile intent on the biggest screen in the house.
- The result is a seamless data thread that moves from “Pinning a couch” on a phone to “Seeing the couch ad” on TV, to “Buying the couch” on a laptop.
A New Revenue “Bundle” for Social Publishers & Creators
- This deal signals a large opportunity for our agency and social publisher clients.
- As performance budgets shift to CTV, platforms need “TV-safe” content to serve those ads against. Social publishers and creators are a great source of that inventory (as we’ve seen with creators licensing content to FAST and VOD platforms, like the recent Tubi / Audiochuck and Netflix / iHeart deals).
- Together, this enables a powerful new sales pitch. The sales teams of creators and social publishers can now approach a brand with a holistic package: “Buy 30-second spots against our show on CTV (via programmatic), AND coordinate that with sponsored posts on our social channels and podcasts.”
- This allows the CTV ad sales team and the creator / publisher sales teams to work together, effectively unlocking larger “share of wallet” from brand marketers who want to dominate a specific audience across every screen.
The Death of “Vibes”: The Shift to Closed-Loop Measurement
- The era of TV advertising based solely on “views and vibes” is ending. The tvScientific acquisition is another market signal that attribution is the new currency.
- Advertisers are under immense pressure to prove ROAS. They can no longer justify millions in TV spend based on “estimated reach.” They need to see the “Closed Loop”—did this ad spend directly impact the P&L?
- Pinterest didn’t just buy an ad server; they bought the ability to say, “We know this user saw the ad on TV and then walked into your store (or visited your site) 2 days later.”
- For the rest of the creator economy, a key market signal to be mindful of here: if you can prove the efficacy of your marketing campaigns in attribution and product sales, in addition to creating a tentpole brand moment that stands out amongst social media noise, you’ll be able to earn more budget share from your marketer clients, and keep them around for longer.
I’m the founder of RockWater Industries. We do M&A and strategy advisory for creator economy and social / audio agencies. From buy / sell-side M&A and fundraising, to consumer research and go-to-market planning.
DM me on LinkedIn or email me chris@wearerockwater.com
