Walmart has taken the plunge into the world of TVs in a bid to boost their ads and revenue, but there are already concerns over privacy.
TV company Vizio has officially been bought by the huge US retailer after a $2.3 billion transaction closed on Tuesday.
There’s a reason Walmart has spent such a hefty sum of money to acquire the company. In 2021, Vizio's earnings report revealed that the company earns more revenue from ads and subscriptions than from selling its TV sets.
The retail giant’s plan seems to be to turn the viewers into the product by collecting data through ACR (Automated Content Recognition), which scans all the content you watch.
This (unsurprisingly) has made buyers question where their data is actually going. Back in 2017, Vizio had to pay a $2.2 million fine to settle a Federal Trade Commission lawsuit for selling the data of unwitting viewers to advertisers.
Of course, this isn’t the first time a company has ventured into ad- and data-driven models for TVs and media players. Amazon (Fire TV), LG, Roku, Samsung and Google (Google TV) are also on the list, to name a few.
With Amazon usually taking the top spot for cheap TVs, this could well be Walmart’s bid to compete for the throne.
Walmart said the acquisition will serve customers “in new ways to enhance their shopping journeys”.
While the acquisition has been completed, Walmart and Vizio are reportedly operating independently for the foreseeable future.
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