Pinterest’s CMO says brands should chase intention, not attention.
Pinterest CMO Claudine Cheever argues brands should plan for intention over attention, citing new research across six markets.
Pinterest’s chief marketing officer, Claudine Cheever, has published a piece on the Pinterest Newsroom arguing that marketers should plan for intention rather than attention.
It was posted on 13 October 2026 and sets out where Pinterest wants brands to judge success: on whether people move from discovery to a decision, not on time spent looking at a screen.
The argument rests on research Pinterest ran with Truth Be Told Consulting and Morning Consult across six global markets. According to the post, people pick up their devices with specific intent roughly 60% of the time, and 44% of the time they report getting sucked into passive scrolling. The post does not name the six markets, and it gives no sample size or fieldwork dates.
What the post says
Cheever calls the tension between those behaviours “The Great Unplugging” and frames it as “Scroll Mode” versus “Action Mode”. The post does not define either mode beyond that contrast.
On brands, the post says they achieve higher trust (+9%) and stronger purchase intent (+8%) in spaces that serve what people came to do, whereas in passive scroll spaces people often ignore them (minus 8%). The page carries footnote markers for these figures, but the footnote text is not shown, so their source, sample and window are not given.
The one case study is Sharpie’s Creative Marker campaign on Pinterest, which the post says delivered a 4.93% incremental sales lift, 644% above the category median, with 74% of those incremental sales driven by completely new buyers. The post does not say how the lift was measured or over what period.
What has not changed
The post announces no new product, ad format or policy. It is a statement of how Pinterest wants advertisers to think about the platform, backed by figures Pinterest reports itself.
What it means for brands
Pinterest is telling brands it wants to be measured on what people do after they see a brand, not on how long they look. When a boss asks about it, the figure to quote is the 44% from the six-market research, with the caveat that the post gives no sample or dates behind it. This week, check how your Pinterest reporting is set up: if it leads on reach and time spent, add the actions people take after seeing your content, so the next review can test Pinterest’s claim against your own numbers.
Sources
The NBK Social briefing
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