Vizio secures $100M in upfront commitments amid shift to CTV

Dive Brief:

Smart TV brand Vizio secured more than $100 million in brand and agency commitments as part of its 2022 upfront negotiations, per a press release. The total represents a fourfold increase in upfront commitments compared to 2021.
Six major agency holding companies made enterprise-level buys and categories including automotive, insurance and retail saw increased investment, per the release. The company's direct advertising business doubled participating brands and tripled average revenue per advertiser in the last year.
The increased advertiser demand for Vizio's ad offerings comes amid a broader viewing shift to connected TV (CTV). Vizio offers agencies and brands access to premium CTV inventory, along with targeting and measurement capabilities that span various channels.

Dive Insight:

Vizio's 2022 upfront commitments topping $100 million is another sign that agency holding companies and brands continue to follow consumers as they shift from linear to CTV viewing. Evolving consumer habits will likely benefit makers of smart TVs like Vizio and Roku, the latter of which has seen users and ad sales surge during the pandemic. In kind, YouTube made CTV a focus of its NewFronts presentation in May after reporting more than 120 million U.S. consumers streamed the service through TV screens. Vizio's smart TVs are in millions of homes in the U.S., per the press release, and its ad platform uses Inscape's Automated Content Recognition (ACR) data to boost targeting and measurement across various channels.

"We're providing agencies with access to premium CTV inventory, the ability to target and measure with precision and access to insights that can inform their investment strategies for all linear and CTV," Mike O'Donnell, chief revenue officer of Vizio's Platform Business, said in the press release.

Vizio claims that its use of Inscape audience data results in greater transparency, accuracy, relevancy and control for brands and agencies. The data supports marketers' efforts around attribution and measurement — increasingly a priority for agencies and brands as other modes of tracking and targeting, like third-party cookies, are becoming less useful amid a tightening of the data privacy landscape.

In addition, Vizio offers frequency capping and lets advertisers reach its audience across mobile devices, desktops and tablets, along with its smart TV offering.

Vizio also allows advertisers to capture consumer attention with ad inventory on WatchFree+, an offering of more than 260 free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channels. Consumers have increasingly spent time on FAST and ad-supported video on demand (AVOD) channels during the pandemic as they seek free content and face subscription fatigue.