The gist of it: this information is from an interview with an executive at Vizio, and it provides the salient value proposition for getting into the advertising business if you sell TVs. Connected TV, TV, smart TV – all these terms are anachronisms that tend to pigeonhole the role of the display in the home. That’s my take, not Vizio’s. Essentially, you have a lot of visible real estate in the home, your viewers rely on your displays to give them a whole bunch of entertainment and services, and that information can be turned into new revenue streams through integrated marketing platforms. Proprietary or not is not the issue. It’s whether you do it or not. And the nots are going to be left behind, eventually.
Travis Hockersmith, group vice president for Platform+ at Vizio, discussed the significance of connected TV (CTV) advertising for media and entertainment advertisers with TVREV. For media and entertainment advertisers, the connected TV space presents a unique opportunity due to the fact that the advertised products are consumed on the same screen where the ads are displayed. According to Hockersmith, Vizio’s SmartCast platform boasts the best search and discovery features in the CTV market.
Hockersmith says, SmartCast enables advertisers to target home screen placements for viewers who are most likely to convert, resulting in excellent performance. These placements resemble editorial content on the home screen and are specifically targeted to the most relevant viewers. Moreover, the platform allows for easy tracking of click performance into the content and, in many cases, measurement of session duration against content through automatic content recognition (ACR) data.
Vizio’s platform also supports video ad ecosystems, allowing advertisers to run the same spots they use on TV to generate interest in their content. Furthermore, these ads can be tracked back to specific app opens or session durations for the advertised content. The combination of SmartCast’s ad placements and the wealth of data available for measuring performance make the platform an ideal choice for promoting media and entertainment content on connected TV screens, says Hockersmith. But then again, of course he would say that. Doesn’t negate the argument for the approach, though.
