Walmart's Big Plans for Vizio, CTV
Walmart will beta test a solution in the next few months that allows select Walmart Connect advertisers to directly plug in and access Vizio connected TV inventory.
The retailer completed its acquisition of Vizio, a TV manufacturer and advertising business, in December. During a meeting with investors last week, Seth Dallaire, executive vice president and chief growth officer, Walmart U.S., shared that the Vizio piece of the business gives Walmart a new connected TV inventory supply pool, where they've seen a ton of advertiser demand.
"That was our fastest-growing segment of off-site inventory in the past year," Dallaire said. "We think bringing that into the Walmart business offers us a lot of optionality for growth because that's new placements that we had only been accessing through our relationship with The Trade Desk in the past."
Walmart is also pushing the Vizio team to continue investing in its SmartCast operating system. "Customers and owners of those TVs expect that they'll have more functionality ... [and] discover programs or find the content that they want easier," Dallaire said. "So, we're continuing to work on that."
As part of this, Dallaire said Walmart is exploring ways to offer or extend the SmartCast operating system to other TV manufacturer OEMs.
By 2026, CTV will account for 20.0% of time spent with media per day by adults in the U.S., compared with 11.5% in 2020, according to eMarketer. More than 90% of CPG brand and agency professionals surveyed for this year's State of Retail Media Report shared CTV/streaming video was at least somewhat important to their organizations.
