Performance marketing has become a race for the last click.
But the problem is, by the time someone is ready to buy, most of the real decision-making is already behind them. They’ve been exploring and comparing options, forming opinions, and quietly crossing brands off the list long before any retargeting pixel fired or ad appeared.
What comes next is the moment every advertiser fights over: the bottom of the funnel, the final click, the conversion.
It’s not a bad place to compete, but it is a crowded one. When every brand shows up at the same moment, on the same platforms, chasing the same ready-to-buy customer, you’re not really differentiating on strategy anymore. You’re differentiating on budget. And that’s a game most brands eventually lose.
The advertisers that will pull ahead aren’t just optimizing that last moment better. They’re showing up earlier, when preferences are still forming and decisions are still in play, and measuring that influence with the same rigor they expect from lower-funnel channels.
tvScientific by Pinterest introduced a new way for advertisers to do exactly that. With this launch, Pinterest’s exclusive intent signal can now be used in CTV campaigns to reach future customers earlier in their shopping journey and turn that intent into action.
For performance marketers, it’s a smarter way to grow on TV: identify high-intent customers, measure impact across the funnel, and optimize toward real business outcomes.
Find your next customer first with high-intent data
The easiest customer to identify is the one who is ready to buy. The most valuable one is the person who is just beginning to choose.
Marketers know this challenge firsthand: 73% say they are struggling to find high-quality customers, according to our 2026 State of Performance TV report.
That’s why the real opportunity is to reach people earlier, while decisions are still taking shape and before demand becomes obvious to everyone else.
This is where tvScientific by Pinterest comes in. By activating Pinterest’s exclusive intent signal through tvScientific’s Performance TV engine, advertisers can find future customers at scale on the biggest screen in the home.
That advantage starts with the signal itself. Pinterest is where people plan. They are exploring, saving, and shaping what they may want next. Every month, people on Pinterest generate about 80 billion searches, creating a predictive intent signal rooted in what they are likely to do next. That makes Pinterest’s signal uniquely valuable because it helps marketers reach people while intent is building and decisions are still in play.
That timing matters because today’s path to purchase rarely follows a single path. Intent builds in one place and action happens in another. According to our 2026 Consumer Trends Report, 46% of consumers say they are more likely to buy if they have seen the brand on social media before seeing it on TV, and 46% say the same if they have seen the brand in search before seeing it on TV. This is proof that TV is more effective when it is part of a connected journey that moves consumers from intent to action across channels.
Relevance matters, too. 40% of consumers want TV ads personalized to their recent searches or purchases, and that rises to 53% among Gen Z.3 As expectations for more timely, actionable TV experiences grow, intent data becomes even more valuable. It helps brands show up during discovery with messaging that feels more useful, more personal, and more likely to move someone forward.
For performance marketers, that changes the job. Winning is no longer just about capturing intent at the bottom of the funnel. It is about identifying intent earlier, shaping it across channels, and guiding consumers toward action. For LG, that meant reaching 73% more households by adding Pinterest audiences to its CTV campaigns.4
Finding your next customer first is the advantage. Connecting that early intent to real outcomes is what reveals its full value.
Prove impact across the funnel
For years, that kind of connection was hard to see clearly. Performance channels were built to capture demand, while TV was treated as a brand channel built to create it. But that distinction no longer reflects how people actually buy.
Customers do not move through the funnel in a straight line. They discover in one place, search in another, and convert somewhere else. If measurement only gives credit to the last touch, it misses the earlier moments that made that conversion more likely in the first place.
tvScientific by Pinterest is built to connect those dots. It gives marketers a way to tie early influence to downstream outcomes, linking top-of-funnel reach to lower-funnel action and showing the full value of TV across the broader media mix.
This is especially important because TV does not work in isolation. It creates a powerful halo effect across paid search, paid social, direct, and organic, helping generate demand and prime viewers for action. With the right measurement, marketers can see not only TV’s direct impact, but also how it improves performance across the rest of the system.
That is why the old line between brand and performance is starting to break down. 64% of marketers say sales increased after adding Performance TV to their mix, and 65% say brand awareness increased.1 Performance TV is not just strengthening brands or driving sales. It’s doing both.
Consumer behavior points in the same direction. 65% of consumers say they have made a purchase after seeing a TV ad, and 60% say they have searched for a brand after seeing one.3
That response is not surprising in today’s dual-screen reality. In 2026, 78% of consumers scroll social media while watching TV, 69% browse online shopping while watching TV, and 68% look up a product they saw in an ad while watching TV.3 Watching TV is no longer a single-screen experience. It is ambient, mobile, and deeply connected to how people shop, search, and communicate.
And when that influence is measured across the broader media mix, its impact becomes even clearer: LG saw a 88% lift across all channels, not just TV. 4 That is what full-funnel influence looks like in practice: connected behaviors turn intent on one device into action on another.
Turn intent into measurable action on CTV
When marketers can see TV’s full contribution clearly, it stops looking like a black box and starts acting like a measurable growth lever.
And once that shift happens, the standard changes. TV is no longer evaluated as a separate awareness channel. It is being asked to operate with the same precision, accountability, and outcome focus as the rest of the performance mix.
This is where tvScientific by Pinterest becomes especially powerful. You define the outcome that matters. From there, tvScientific’s AI platform, enhanced by Pinterest’s signal, works to optimize every ad dollar against that goal.
Pinterest provides the signal of what people may do next, and tvScientific AI helps marketers act on that signal more intelligently over time, improving decisioning and efficiency as campaigns learn. Together, they help marketers optimize TV campaigns to turn early intent into measurable action on CTV.
That expectation is already taking hold across the market: 67% of marketers say Performance TV helped them achieve revenue and growth goals in 2025, and 90% expect it to help them do the same in 2026.1 This is rooted in accountability: 44% say connecting TV spend to measurable outcomes is what they value most about Performance TV.1
That tells a very clear story. Marketers do not want TV to sit in a separate bucket anymore. They want it measured against the same outcomes they use to judge every other performance channel. On average, when tvScientific AI is enriched with Pinterest’s high-intent signals, it leads to a +27% increase in outcomes driven per $100 in spend, with purchases up +65%.5
This is what makes tvScientific by Pinterest more than a point solution. It is a smarter growth system built around earlier intent, transparent measurement, and optimization designed to deliver outcomes.
Your unfair advantage starts here
For too long, performance marketing has treated the final click as if it were the whole story. But by the time someone is ready to act, much of the decision has already been shaped by everything that came before it: what they noticed, what they searched for, and what made your brand feel worth choosing.
That is why this launch matters. tvScientific by Pinterest helps marketers show up earlier in the decision-making process, connect that early signal to what happens next, and use TV with the same accountability they expect from the rest of their performance mix.
The opportunity is not to wait until demand is obvious. It is to reach future customers sooner, influence decisions while they are still taking shape, and prove how that early intent leads to action across the funnel.
Ready to see how tvScientific by Pinterest can help you turn earlier intent into measurable action? Book a demo.
Sources:
1. tvScientific by Pinterest2026 State of Performance TV Report, United States, January 2026.
2. Pinterest Internal Data, Global, Q3 2025
3. tvScientific by Pinterest 2026 Consumer Trends Report, United States, April 2026.
4. tvScientific by Pinterest Internal Data, United States, March 2026.
5. tvScientific by Pinterest Internal Data, US, 3/27/26 - 4/7/26. N= >300 advertisers. Outcomes evaluated were purchases, website visits, installs, and registration.
