Whereas Walmart’s acquisition of Vizio remains to be pending, the good TV maker should maintain its eye by itself future priorities.

Lately, Vizio has undergone a metamorphosis, transitioning from a {hardware} firm to primarily a related TV advert platform. Now, its greatest progress alternatives lie in programmatic advert gross sales and residential display screen monetization to promote extra provide, stated Travis Hockersmith, group VP of Vizio’s promoting platform enterprise.

Behind these progress areas is Vizio’s not-so-secret ingredient: its automated content material recognition (ACR) knowledge.

ACR underpins Vizio’s advert gross sales as a result of it helps patrons join what’s enjoying on display screen to precise audiences. Though ACR has some gaps, equivalent to in native TV, it supplies a solution to measure and goal adverts throughout streaming apps on Vizio TVs, which advertisers can’t do when shopping for from particular person apps.

All of it comes all the way down to “making the very best use of our stock,” Hockersmith stated.

I sat down with Hockersmith to be taught extra about Vizio’s advert gross sales technique and what it might imply for Vizio’s future below new possession.

AdExchanger: What’s the greatest house display screen worth prop?

TRAVIS HOCKERSMITH: Good TV house screens are a mass-reach car for advertisers.

We’ve seen a whole lot of demand for house display screen provide and sponsorships over the previous 12 months as a result of it ensures manufacturers can attain shoppers who in any other case solely stream ad-free content material.

Manufacturers additionally see the house display screen as a spot to extend their publicity to viewers with out elevating the frequency of commercials they run, which is partly a response to shrinking TV advert stock.

Talking of frequency, how does Vizio handle advert repetition?

With our ACR knowledge from Inscape [Vizio’s data science subsidiary], which may inform advertisers precisely the place their adverts ran.

One use case is incremental attain. We will use ACR to run a model’s adverts solely on TV units that haven’t been uncovered to the advert but.

One other use case is for frequency capping. Utilizing ACR, we monitor the variety of occasions an advert is delivered to explicit households, whatever the demand supply. As soon as a marketing campaign hits the advertiser’s desired frequency, we cease working that advert.

We will’t cease different programmatic platforms from serving the identical advert, however we are able to at the least be certain Vizio isn’t contributing to over-frequency.

How does a programmatic advertiser purchase Vizio stock?

By far, the fastest-growing piece of Vizio’s advert gross sales enterprise is programmatic assured and personal marketplaces (PMPs).

A rising variety of manufacturers solely wish to purchase us programmatically, so we’ve been doing a whole lot of integrations with DSPs and SSPs to make our stock as extensively accessible as attainable.

However many manufacturers that purchase programmatically are additionally in search of supply-path optimization. So we’re additionally working with DSPs to create extra direct paths to our provide, equivalent to by means of The Commerce Desk’s OpenPath and Yahoo’s Backstage.

How is Vizio incorporating programmatic gross sales it doesn’t contemplate direct-sold?

Except for programmatic assured and PMPs, we even have demand from exterior our personal advert gross sales staff, such because the open trade and SSPs.

Advertisers that purchase by means of our managed service or an insertion order get first crack at obtainable advert spots, adopted by programmatic assured offers after which PMPs. After these buys are fulfilled, the remaining stock is out there to patrons accessing us by means of SSPs or within the open trade.

How will Vizio’s technique change if and when the cope with Walmart is finalized?

I can’t say as a result of we’re nonetheless ready on regulatory approval. So, proper now, we’re enterprise as standard.

Nonetheless, there are some fairly clear implications of the deal, equivalent to entry to Walmart’s shopper knowledge.

I can’t converse to what knowledge Walmart intends to introduce to us if and when regulatory approval happens. We don’t have entry to Walmart’s shopper knowledge proper now.

What I can say is that we’ve gotten used to working with numerous sources of customer knowledge and outcomes-based measurement for our current promoting enterprise.

Over the following 12 months, our precedence is enhancing our knowledge and measurement capabilities to ensure we can provide advertisers as a lot element as attainable about how their adverts are performing.

This interview has been calmly edited and condensed.

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