Walmart buying TV-brand Vizio for its ad-fueling customer data
California-based Vizio is best known for lower-priced TVs, but its real value to Walmart is its advertising business and access to user data.Walmart said it’s buying Vizio for approximately $2.3 billion, pending regulatory clearance and additional closing conditions. Vizio makes money by selling ads, including those shown on the Vizio SmartCast OS and on free content available on its TVs with ads. Walmart said buying Vizio will give it new ways to appeal to advertisers and that those ad efforts would be further fueled by Walmart’s high-volume sales of TVs. Read more from Ars Technica.
Total TV Viewing Hits 4-Year High In January
Boosted by ever stronger streaming viewing, Nielsen says total TV viewing climbed to a four-year high in January 2024, with usage up 3.7% from December in total day viewing for persons two years of age and up. The month of January had nine of its highest-volume streaming days, including January 13th when Peacock’s cover of its first exclusive streaming NFL playoff game aired, featuring the Kansas City Chiefs-Miami Dolphins, which resulted in 3.9 billion viewing minutes. Read more from MediaPost.
Traditional Search Forecast To Fall 25% By 2026
Will traffic from search engines to your website drop 25% by 2026 as a result of the rise of generative AI answer engines? That’s what Gartner, a technological research and consulting firm, is predicting. Gartner believes people will turn to generational AI conversational assistants (e.g., ChatGPT, Claude) rather than traditional search engines (e.g., Google). If true, this would mean a huge shift in search marketing strategies, both paid and organic. Read more from Search Engine Land.
Ad Fontes Media Teams with The Trade Desk to Bring Ad Dollars to Quality Journalism
Ad Fontes Media, a tech company that rates the news for bias and reliability, is announcing a new service that will allow advertisers to direct billions in advertising spending towards quality news journalism and tap into the significant unduplicated reach and higher ROAS that the news category delivers. On Tuesday, Ad Fontes Media announced the integration of its ratings data with online ad giant The Trade Desk’s programmatic buying technology. Ad Fontes’ data allows advertisers to screen out partisan, AI-generated, or clickbait websites in real-time and direct their ad spending toward sites performing vital journalism in the public interest. Read more from MarTech Series.
ESPN, College Football Playoff Agree to Six-Year, $7.8B Extension
The expanded College Football Playoff is expected to remain exclusive to the network that launched the series 10 years ago, as ESPN is in the process of securing a six-year extension that will keep the tourney in-house through the 2031-32 season. Under the provisional terms that have been drawn up, Disney will pay around $1.3 billion for each year of the new agreement, according to a source with knowledge of the negotiations. Read more from Sportico.
