Vibe vs. tvScientific: Which CTV Platform Is Right for You?

Vibe.co and tvScientific are both performance CTV platforms — built for marketers who need TV to produce measurable outcomes, not just reach. tvScientific was acquired by Pinterest in December 2025 and now uses Pinterest's social interest graph as its CTV targeting layer. Vibe connects to the marketing stack most performance teams already run — Klaviyo, Shopify, Northbeam, HubSpot — so CTV results show up alongside Search and Social in the same Northbeam or Triple Whale dashboard. Performance advertising has three pillars: Search, Social, and TV. The platform you choose for TV determines whether that third pillar integrates cleanly with your stack — or becomes a separate experiment to justify.

What are Vibe and tvScientific, and who are they built for?

tvScientific is a performance CTV platform built on the premise that TV should be held to direct-response standards. Founded in 2019, the company raised $57.9M before being acquired by Pinterest in December 2025; it now operates as tvScientific by Pinterest. According to Digiday's coverage of the acquisition, tvScientific had reached approximately $100M ARR at the time of the deal. Their customer base spans mobile gaming (Zynga, Wildlife Studios), DTC (Crocs, Wildgrain), fintech (EarnIn), and enterprise brands (Dell, Foot Locker).

Vibe is a streaming TV advertising platform built for performance marketers across DTC, ecommerce, B2B, and enterprise brands. The platform reaches 120M+ households across premium streaming inventory, with 10,000+ brands running campaigns across 500+ channels. At $165M ARR, Vibe's customer base spans mid-market DTC brands running Klaviyo and Northbeam, enterprise performance brands like TYR, and B2B teams using CTV for account-based pipeline generation — connecting TV exposure to HubSpot pipeline through the Vibe Pixel.

Both platforms exist to make CTV behave like a channel that proves its results. The differences show up in how each one gets there.

How does audience targeting compare between Vibe and tvScientific?

Both platforms offer audience targeting beyond basic demographics, but they start from different places.

tvScientific's acquisition by Pinterest means its CTV targeting now runs on Pinterest's social interest graph — behavioral signals from what people save, click, and engage with on Pinterest, enriched with LiveRamp and MX8 Labs data. Social interest signals work best in discovery-oriented categories with genuine Pinterest audience density: lifestyle, home, food, fashion. The constraint is what those signals actually represent — what people find interesting to look at, not what they are actively buying or searching for. Since the acquisition, tvScientific's targeting roadmap follows Pinterest's product priorities, not an independent CTV-native one.

Vibe builds audiences from identity resolution tied to the CRM data you already have. Klaviyo segments sync directly to Vibe targeting — a non-purchaser list, a high-LTV cohort, a lapsed-customer segment — without a CSV export step. Shopify customer files seed suppression lists and lookalike models. The audience you've built inside your marketing stack is the audience you reach on streaming TV.

Vibe's Identity Intelligence layer combines a 120M+ household graph built from intent signals, keyword audiences, and purchase behavior with the first-party CRM data you already have in Klaviyo and Shopify. tvScientific's targeting layer is Pinterest's social interest graph — what people engage with on one social platform, enriched with third-party data. Both offer more precision than demo targeting. The question is whether your best-converting audiences are defined by social interest or by search intent and purchase history. For performance brands evaluating ROAS and CAC, those are different audiences — and they behave differently at the conversion layer.

The difference becomes most visible for niche products. Reedsy, an online marketplace connecting authors with editors, cover designers, and marketers, needed to reach people actively writing a book — not people who broadly enjoy reading. No standard interest bucket covers that gap. Megan Thomson, Reedsy's Head of Performance Marketing, built custom audiences from Reedsy's highest-performing Google search keywords — terms like 'developmental editing' and 'copy editing' — and launched in two days. The result: 5.3x ROAS in the trailing 30 days and a blended CPL of $15.05, verified against Google Analytics. 'Most platforms only have audiences like people who like reading books. We needed people who are actually writing one.'

Broad interest segments get you reach. Audience definitions built from what your actual customers search for and buy get you conversion. For performance brands where CAC is the primary evaluation metric, the distinction determines whether CTV proves out.

How does each platform handle measurement and attribution?

This is where the two platforms diverge most for performance marketers evaluating measurement and reporting.

tvScientific's attribution is built around household-level signal matching — connecting TV exposure to defined outcomes within attribution windows. Incrementality measurement runs through third-party partners including Measured and INCRMNTAL. For teams that want outcome-based pricing, tvScientific offers a sales-qualified product tier alongside standard self-serve CPM campaigns.

Vibe's measurement connects to the attribution tools most performance teams already use. Northbeam, Triple Whale, and Haus all connect natively — CTV performance shows up in the same reporting view as every other paid channel, not in a separate dashboard requiring reconciliation. Vibe is the only CTV platform with native Northbeam incrementality testing at launch.

What that looks like in practice: Shinesty, a DTC underwear and loungewear brand, had reached an estimated 40% of US adults on Meta. Growing further meant finding net-new customers — which required suppressing their entire purchaser list from CTV targeting. Shinesty synced a Klaviyo segment of 4M+ email non-purchasers to Vibe, which is why 70% of CTV-attributed purchases from their campaigns are net-new customers. Using Northbeam's Clicks + Deterministic Views model, they tested attribution windows and landed on seven days as an accurate representation of how CTV converts — a one-day window captures roughly half the performance. CPMs held below $19 through Q4 with no seasonal spike.

The attribution window question matters more than most teams anticipate. CTV doesn't convert the same day Meta does. A team evaluating CTV against a one-day window will consistently see half the channel's actual impact — and make budget decisions based on that incomplete picture.

An agency layer between you and your CTV data slows the feedback loop performance marketers depend on. When Northbeam is already your source of truth across Meta, Google, and CTV, a platform-only dashboard doesn't add insight — it adds a reconciliation step.

What integrations does each platform support?

Both platforms support a meaningful integration stack. The overlap is genuine: tvScientific and Vibe both connect to Triple Whale, AppsFlyer, Adjust, Invoca, and Shopify for conversion tracking. That baseline covers most DTC and growth-stage teams.

Where the stacks diverge:

TYR, a performance athletic brand, ran prospecting and retargeting simultaneously from day one — Klaviyo and Shopify audiences feeding both layers, Northbeam tracking cross-channel attribution across Meta, Google, and Vibe with a Clicks + Deterministic Views model. The result: 234.6% revenue growth in 60 days, 5.24x MER, and a 24.2% blended CAC reduction — all Northbeam-verified.

The integration question comes down to whether TV functions as a true third pillar alongside Search and Social — showing up in the same Northbeam or Triple Whale dashboard — or becomes a separate reporting layer you have to reconcile manually. If your stack is Klaviyo to CTV to Northbeam, the value of the channel depends on how cleanly those three systems talk to each other.

Which platform is the right fit for your team?

This is a stack question and a data question. Both platforms run campaigns that work. The difference is what the targeting is built from and whether the results show up inside your existing measurement stack — or require a separate layer to evaluate.

If you're comparing Vibe against other options or evaluating the best CTV platforms for retargeting, here's the honest breakdown:

tvScientific is likely the better fit if:

Vibe is likely the better fit if:

Vibe holds a 4.8 rating on G2 across 137 reviews. The themes that come up most: ease of use and audience segmentation that connects to real results. One reviewer put it directly: 'The ability to segment audiences helps us connect awareness efforts to real results. The platform makes it really simple to understand performance and take action without feeling overwhelmed.'

Sijo Home, a DTC home textiles brand, cut new-customer CAC by 57% compared to social — a figure Northbeam-verified, not platform-reported. 304% ROAS. The Klaviyo integration handled the audience segmentation; Northbeam handled the attribution. For a full-funnel CTV approach where every layer is measurable end-to-end, the Sijo Home case study is worth reading before making a platform decision.

Both platforms will tell you their results work. The ones that show up in your Northbeam or Triple Whale dashboard — alongside Search and Social, verified by the same third-party tools — are the ones that function as a true pillar of your performance stack, not a siloed experiment requiring its own reporting layer to justify.

Is tvScientific self-serve or managed service?

tvScientific offers both. Standard CPM-based campaigns are available through a self-serve interface — sign up, create a campaign, launch without a sales conversation. An outcome-based pricing tier is also available to qualifying advertisers, with eligibility confirmed through a sales process. For teams that want managed support for campaign setup, tvScientific offers that alongside the self-serve option. Check tvScientific directly for current onboarding details.

What happened to tvScientific after the Pinterest acquisition?

Pinterest announced the acquisition of tvScientific in December 2025. The company rebranded as tvScientific by Pinterest in 2026, with Pinterest's social graph and audience signals now integrated into its CTV targeting layer. The platform continues to operate as a standalone CTV advertising product, not as a component of Pinterest's core social ad offering. Coverage of the acquisition and integration details was reported by Digiday and AdExchanger.

How quickly can I launch a CTV campaign on Vibe?

Most campaigns launch within a day or two of uploading creative. Reedsy, an online marketplace connecting authors with editors and publishing professionals, went from audience setup to live delivery in two days — starting from keyword-based audience configuration with no agency and no qualification step. Vibe's self-serve platform gives every advertiser full access to all campaign types and targeting features from day one, with no minimum contract required.

How does Vibe compare to tvScientific for DTC and B2B brands?

For DTC ecommerce brands running Klaviyo and Shopify, Vibe's primary advantage is that those integrations are native and bidirectional — segments built in Klaviyo flow directly into CTV targeting against Vibe's 120M+ household identity graph, and Shopify attribution flows back without manual uploads. For B2B and enterprise teams, the Vibe Pixel connects CTV exposure to HubSpot pipeline through a custom deal property, making TV-attributed opportunities visible in the same view as SEM and paid social. Vibe's measurement integrations with Northbeam and Triple Whale mean teams see CTV performance in the same dashboard as every other channel, verified by the same third party. Case studies from Reedsy (5.3x ROAS, $15.05 CPL), Shinesty (70% net-new customers, Northbeam-verified), TYR (234.6% revenue growth, 5.24x MER), and AirOps, a B2B SaaS brand (3.4x lead growth in 90 days, $580.6K qualified pipeline from $43.5K spend) are all independently attributable through third-party tools, not platform-reported metrics alone.

Does Vibe have a cost-per-outcome or performance-based pricing model?

Vibe operates on a CPM-based model — you pay for impressions against a defined audience, with real-time optimization toward your campaign objective. The trade-off is that attribution is verified through your existing stack — Northbeam, Triple Whale, Haus — giving you an independently verifiable read on outcome performance rather than a platform-reported figure. Teams that want to prove TV ROI through their own measurement tools before committing to outcome-based pricing often find that approach more defensible internally.