Vizio Ads on Thursday disclosed scoring more than $200 million in advertising commitments for its upfront season – marking a 100% year over year increase, in part thanks to its free ad-supported streaming TV service, WatchFree+.
According to Vizio, the smart TV-maker’s advertising business grew 71% year over year in the second quarter. In the three-month period it added 243 net new advertisers.
In disclosing upfront commitments from agency holding companies, brands and studios, Vizio cited market trends, including a growing audience shift from linear to streaming as well as better targeting and measurement direct-to-device advertising offers. The $200 million covers advertising revenue committed to the platform and advertising products, including but not limited its FAST service.
Still, Vizio said WatchFree+ was a contributing factor to increased upfront ad dollars, thanks to an expanded library of programming, though declined to break out specific upfront figures for it. Since launching On Demand less than a year ago Vizio has added thousands of premium titles across movies and episodic TV properties. WatchFree+ ranks as the second most-popular free app on the Vizio SmartCast streaming platform – behind only YouTube.
Adam Bergman, group VP of Advertising and Data Sales at Vizio, described the breadth of advertising commitments across products, including sponsorship on Vizio home screens, and pointed to the value of WatchFree+ as the main highlight.
“Advertiser investment in Vizio Ads spans the entirety of our product suite. That includes our high-impact Home Screen sponsorship opportunities across the SmartCast platform, targeted video ads inside WatchFree+, and our cross-platform Household Connect solution," Bergman told Fierce Video via email. "WatchFree+ is the crown jewel as one of our most compelling and important assets where advertisers see unique and distinct value."
Also helping bolster advertiser commitments was buyer demand “for data-informed advertising and home screen engagement offerings that deliver unique audiences and great experiences,” according to the announcement.
Mike O’Donnell, chief revenue and strategic growth officer at Vizio, said in a statement that the year-on-year growth reflects “the important role connected TVs have in the home and in the marketplace at large.”
“Our focus is always on how we benefit customers, starting with the millions of people that turn our TVs on every day all the way through to the advertising community in search of unique audiences and better experiences,” O’Donnell stated.
In an October 5 blog on the growth of FAST services by Interpret, the research firm wrote the consumer ad-experience in FASTs "compares favorably to traditional linear," citing generally lighter ad-loads and advertising that's more targeted and relevant.
The firm’s VideoWatch data also “shows that FAST viewers are more tolerant of advertising overall, and they are more likely to enjoy ads that are interactive.” For example, 31% of free ad-supported viewers said they don’t mind ads as long as they’re relevant, humorous or intriguing, compared to 26% of all streaming viewers who felt that way.
Vizio is one of the main smart TV OEMs that has its own operating system as well as its own FAST platform, as do LG, and Samsung. Roku and Amazon, meanwhile, are two connected TV device makers with respective FAST services, with Google also one of the major players in terms of controlling video consumption devices.
In the announcement disclosing upfront figures, Bergman pointed to Vizio’s integrated hardware and software model as uniquely positioning the company to help advertisers “prove the impact of campaigns” as they put a “renewed focus on optimization and outcomes.”
“Advertisers trust us to help them reach receptive audiences, verify that ads actually hit the screen across devices, and identify the actions viewers took from experiencing the creative,” Bergman continued.
In terms of data gleaned from smart TVs, automatic content recognition (ACR) delivers glass-level insights. At a recent NATPE event, Vizio’s director of content acquisition Greg Barnard said the company boasts the largest ACR dataset in the market.
“When we have the information, we’re better equipped to make better decisions for our consumers,” he said, in speaking about content and FAST channels. “I think up until now we’ve seen a lot of running on FAST, running on AVOD…we’re past that point now…we’re in the age of optimization.”
In the second quarter Vizio reported total numbers of hours consumed on its smart TVs grew to 8.154 billion, with around half of that coming directly from content streamed via apps on the SmartCast platform.
Nielsen earlier this year expanded a deal with Vizio to integrate the OEM’s Inscape ACR data from around 20 million U.S. connected TVs for both local and national audience measurement tools.