Media platform Teads said it made a deal to sell home-screen advertising inventory on smart television sets using the VIDAA operating system.
The deal is a big one for Teads because VIDAA is backed by Hisense, one of the world’s top TV makers, Teads CEO Jeremy Arditi told Broadcasting+Cable.
Other set makers, including Toshiba, have also adopted VIDAA.
At the same time, the smart TV home page is becoming a more popular destination for advertisers, Arditi said.
Having an ad on the screen when a viewer first turns on the set is a big opportunity for TV programmers to reach viewers.
“Now it’s becoming the norm that that placement is also open to premium advertisers,” he said.
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The home-screen inventory generates revenue for the set makers. It also gives advertisers an opportunity to reach viewers who don’t subscribe to ad-supported streaming services.
“This enables advertisers to have a more holistic way of reaching audiences,” Arditi said.
Other device makers, including Roku, Vizio and LG also sell homepage ads.
Teads has already sold VIDAA home screen ads to Southwest Airlines.
“Southwest Airlines is thrilled to announce our partnership with Teads, harnessing their innovative CTV native display inventory to elevate our brand presence among discerning travelers,“ Southwest marketing manager, paid communications Amanda Erlbacher said. “This collaboration aligns seamlessly with our campaign objective to drive awareness of Southwest Airlines’s unique selling points, including our generous checked bag policy and flexible booking options.
“Teads’s extensive reach across major markets and their cutting-edge advertising solutions provide the ideal platform to communicate our commitment to offering unparalleled value and convenience to all travelers,” Erlbacher said.
In addition to Southwest, “we’re also seeing a lot of appetite from the automotive sector. We're seeing a lot of appetite from the luxury and fragrance sector, so it's actually sort of spanning a pretty wide set of verticals,” Arditi said.
Teads has already been selling homepage inventory for other set makers. The company said it has nonexclusive arrangements with the top four set-makers globally and has an exclusive deal to sell inventory for LG in France and Belgium, with more deals on the way.
Teads intends to make the native home-screen inventory available through its programmatic platforms. That means standardizing home screen advertising across different devices and different operating systems.
“Part of what our value proposition is has been removing some of the friction involved in managing different types of integrations and formats across different OEMs,” Arditi said. “We are simplifying or abstracting that difficulty away from the workflow for advertisers and agencies.”
In addition to the technical issues, there’s a challenge in getting media buyers to understand the value of home-screen advertisers and what budget to use to buy it.
“It's CTV, but it’s not your traditional video commercial,” Arditi said. But when we have conversations often at the brand manager or advertiser level, they really like the canvas that that it offers and they like the fact that it's a way to consolidate and you know, the reach of audiences across a large base.”
Teads is talking to VIDAA about getting more access to data about who is watching the platform, he said.
Teads also has the ability to sell some commercial inventory on FAST channels available on VIDAA-powered sets.
“Our promise and role at VIDAA is to develop and manage the best independent platform in the world that enables all of our partners from the content, advertising, and technology space [to have] sustainable growth,” Guy Edri, CEO of VIDAA USA, said. “We are not competing with our partners, but leveraging their power and expertise to create win-win situations. And our cooperation with Teads is just that.
“Joining our state-of-the-art platform and our reach to tens of millions of homes with Teads’ market leadership in advertising,“ he added. “Together we are forming a powerful partnership with an exclusive offering for publishers in some of the world’s largest markets.”
In 2022 Nexxen, then known as Tremor International, invested $25 million in VIDAA. That investment made Tremor the exclusive supply-side platform for VIDAA in the U.S., Canada and Australia.
Teads’s deal is independent of the Nexxen deal, Arditi said.
