Walmart provides more CTV opportunities for advertisers with acquisition of Vizio

Walmart’s recent acquisition of TV maker Vizio is a significant move for the company’s retail media wing, Walmart Connect, as it looks to expand opportunities for advertisers looking to reach customers in new ways while increasing Walmart’s share in the electronics space.

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Key Takeaways:

• Walmart Connect can utilize the Vizio brand for their in-store TV wall ads, reducing cost for advertisers to invest in these newer in-store placements and increasing performance delivered
• Vizio's dominant footprint in the low cost premium TV space will allow Walmart to take a larger portion of share in the electronics space
• We expect to see Vizio’s Smartcast evolve into a premium offering exclusive to Walmart, allowing more native streaming solutions and closed loop attribution
• In the future - clean room technology will allow advertisers to create highly targeted audiences at scale

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The impact today

Walmart’s ownership of the Vizio brand opens the door of opportunities for both Walmart Connect and advertisers looking to invest in their Walmart customers.

Increasing electronics share - In addition to Walmart’s ability to increase its share in the electronics category beyond the Onn brand, this acquisition will allow Walmart to quickly build up an offering similar to Amazon’s Fire TV brand. 

In-store retail media - Walmart Connect will be able to utilize the Vizio brand for in-store TV wall ads which will provide advertisers looking to invest in in-store retail media with reduced costs to serve and increased performance delivered.

Increased native streaming solutions & closed-loop attribution - Taking a page from Amazon, Vizio's Smartcast smart system is an extremely exciting part of this acquisition. As Walmart brings Vizio into their landscape, we expect to see Smartcast evolve into a premium offering exclusive to Walmart. This will both allow more native streaming solutions for advertisers with closed loop attribution, but positions Walmart to gain a larger household footprint as they bring devices into users homes.

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Looking ahead

Coupled with clean room technology, advertisers will be able to create highly targeted audiences at scale, and measure advertising performance against sales results at Walmart in areas like long-term customer value and new-to-brand.

As the CTV landscape continues to evolve, we expect to see Walmart Connect continue to invest in building up the Smartcast platform to offer advertisers expanded reach and household penetration. The addition of Smartcast’s robust first party data to Walmart Connect and Luminate’s existing data provides Walmart an increasing competitive advantage in the race to offer full-funnel, omnichannel performance measurement.