Walmart’s move to make Paramount+ ad-supported subscriptions free to Walmart+ members already provided the retailer with a video offering comparable to Prime without the trouble or expense of producing and acquiring its own content, he said. Vizio gives Walmart other ways to compete with Amazon that will be hard for others to match, he added.
Vizio gives Walmart a TV brand stronger than Amazon Fire TV, and a much more recognizable own label than its current Onn, Raj said. Even if other retailers such as Costco decline to keep selling Vizio, or Walmart stops selling to them, he said Walmart could make Vizio TVs a loss leader, sold at low prices in its stores, to build out its CTV ad audience and data gathering.
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Chasing the long tail
Walmart’s announcement made note of Vizio’s 500 brand advertisers, largely Fortune 500 companies, but many of them are Walmart suppliers that already do business with Walmart Connect. A bigger opportunity may be combining the CTV reach of Vizio’s platform and Walmart’s growing self-service ad management capability developed for third-party marketplace suppliers to reach the long tail of small and medium-size marketers that TV and streaming networks largely have failed to reach so far, Raj said. Given that Walmart-owned Sam’s Club was built to serve many small and medium-sized businesses and has a Sam’s Member Access Platform retail network of its own, it could serve as the conduit for such a move.
Vizio gives Walmart the opportunity to launch a product similar to what Amazon launched late last year with Sponsored TV, a self-service platform aimed at small and medium-sized businesses to put ads on Freevee, apps and other free ad-supported channels, said Himanshu Jain, VP of product at CommerceIQ, a retail media consultancy.
“Vizio has a lot of free channels that are more local and cater to the demographics of Walmart buyers,” Jain said. That could help Walmart build out a long tail of U.S. advertisers in ways that Amazon and other big digital platforms have done on a national basis.
Jain also sees potential for Vizio to strike deals with Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and others to create more of a Prime Video style offering ultimately that could appeal to bigger brand advertisers. And Raj said Vizio brings to Walmart Connect a sales force more accustomed to working with agencies and big brands as opposed to trade and shopper marketing teams that most often buy retail media today.
From brand to performance
As of right now, CTV is still largely the province of big brand advertisers and brand advertising, even as the market shifts toward direct-to-consumer and other performance players, Raj said. Vizio and Walmart Connect could combine to change that.
“We’ve been hearing a lot more movement in TV being really focused on performance-type advertising campaigns,” said Alex Yip, director of CTV at AppsFlyer, a digital advertising and connected TV measurement firm, citing Roku integrations with Shopify and Unity to track app downloads. “You’re seeing kind of this migration to people using Roku to directly make purchases. I see this Walmart play with Vizio as getting into that kind of business.”
T-commerce is one area where the strength of the Vizio operating system really delivers value, Raj said. “Now Walmart, without giving up any of their data to anybody else, any third party, can deliver commerce experience on the TV integrating directly into their operating system. That’s huge. Now nobody else really has that.”
Vizio is also possibly the only remaining device manufacturer of meaningful scale that could be easily acquired by an e-commerce player, giving Walmart an edge at least in being the primary challenger to Amazon in retail media and T-commerce, Raj said.
“You may one day be able to ask Vizio to both play ‘Yellowstone’ on Paramount+ and build your Walmart shopping list at the same time,’ said Nicole Scaglione, VP of CTV, OTT and Video at supply-side ad tech platform PubMatic, in an email. “Through automated content recognition [ACR] paired with household information, past purchase data and streaming preferences, Walmart will be able to own serving up content and commerce on the glass in your living room.”