New York - Walmart-owned Vizio held its annual presentation at IAB NewFronts Monday, where the retail giant showed off plans to enhance the connection and more clearly show the consumer path between content and commerce for advertisers via its acquired smart TV OS.
Walmart bought Vizio and its SmartCast TVOS platform for $2.3 billion in December 2024 and now has a little over a year of integration under its belt.
At the end of 2025, Walmart disclosed that it will use the Vizio OS as a Walmart private label, rolling out to power Vizio-branded and the in-house onn TV brand at both Walmart and Sam’s Club stores across the U.S.
One of the first elements touted during the presentation for ad buyers is scale offered by a Walmart-Vizio combo – both in terms of the 150 million U.S. customers the retailer serves weekly online and in-store, as well as existing and potential growth for Vizio OS-powered TVs in U.S. homes amid a competitive TVOS space.
According to Vizio Chief Revenue and Strategic Growth Officer Mike O’Donnell, Vizio TVs are already in the homes of 92 million people in the U.S. And given the rollout to power in-house private label brands, the Vizio OS has the potential reach 25-30% of U.S. households, he said. With its retail standing at Walmart and Sam’s Clubs locations, the executive also cited Omdia analysis that pegged Vizio as positioned to become the country's No. 1 TV OS in unit sales by 2027.
With Walmart and Vizio working in tandem, the company can tap into both viewing habits and consumption data happening on smart TVs alongside first-party shopping data from the retailer – which combined aim to help brands better connect with consumers and drive desired results while potentially improving the experience for viewers as well.
Better bridging the path from CTV ad placements and sponsorships to results for advertisers is a goal several in the streaming space are working to achieve. It’s one where Walmart sees a place to thrive with a more closed-loop sales attribution ecosystem that can connect ad engagement on CTV to purchases. That's thanks in part to its existing Walmart Connect business and the acquisition of Vizio, as it now controls and has insights into multiple parts of the consumer viewing and shopping journey and how those two intertwine to influence decisions.
To aid in gleaning insights into the content-commerce connection, Walmart is introducing a unified login for new Vizio and Vizio OS-powered onn TVs that will have customers to use their Walmart account to login and access the smart TV features. Not many additional details have been disclosed as of yet, but the rollout starts today with select new Vizio TVs and will be ongoing.
Requiring users to login to use smart TV features isn’t unique to Vizio, but not all are tied to a retail or shopping account like Walmart.
It wasn’t immediately clear if there will be additional options for users of new Vizio-powered TVs to login, but a release accompanying the presentation said all integrations “are designed to respect consumer choice and privacy, with data used in aggregated, permissioned, and compliant ways.”
From a Walmart-Vizio and advertiser perspective there are clear benefits from having a Walmart account as the login for the TV device. As the company noted, it establishes a secure identity framework across devices and connects streaming engagement directly with retail interactions.
“By unifying account access, we’re creating a seamless experience across screens while laying the groundwork for deeper integration between retail and entertainment,” said Courtney Naudo, SVP, Business Integration and Planning at Walmart, in a statement.
That’s not to say all of Vizio’s efforts for advertisers are focused on bottom-of-the-funnel or attributing immediate, direct conversion to sales from CTV ads.
“As a TV platform we understand people come for the content experiences. And if those experiences are engaging, brands get the opportunity to participate,” O’Donnell said on stage.
However, “we also understand not every ad drives to a shelf right away. Some are designed just to build an emotional connection,” he continued – speaking to the upper funnel brand building and resonance that the sight, sound, motion and historical reach of TV advertising has long been known for.
“Content to commerce refers to the role TV experiences play in driving business outcomes,” O’Donnell emphasized.
To that end, Vizio also highlighted the importance of the TV screen as an entry point to consumers and how advertisers – both in-store Walmart and out-of-store sellers – can use placements and integrations across the TVOS user interface to create connections. That includes the Home Screen (where viewers spend more than 30 minutes throughout the day, according to Vizio Group VP of Advertising and Data Sales Adam Bergman), as well as Vizio’s content Collections, Sports Zones and the built-in free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST).
And some brand partners are looking to get directly in on the content with product integrations that are powered by Walmart’s first-party customer data insights.
Announced Monday, the company disclosed a first-to-market product placement integration with brand L’Oréal and a global content partner.
The forthcoming show is currently in pre-production so more details to be announced later, but products from the beauty and cosmetics brand will be included in the branded content on Vizio. L’Oréal and the branded content effort will also leverage the broader Walmart ecosystem with creative extensions across Walmart product pages and retail touchpoints.
Speaking on stage, Nora Wolfe, SVP of Media at L’Oréal, commented on why the brand sees benefits from showing up in new places within the CTV experience beyond traditional ad pods or commercial breaks.
“We love taking advantage of high tech placements. We're thinking about the home screen really as the front door of the living room, and it gives us the opportunity to get all 90 million video homes before they pick their content or get behind a paywall when we can't reach them,” Wolfe said.
And Lara Barmish, group director of Consumables at retail media platform Walmart Connect, noted incremental reach and overlap of people that use Walmart and Vizio – which again helps the so-called brand flywheel and puts the company in a position to more clearly connect the dots between content and commerce for advertisers.
“There is an 80% overlap, actually, between Walmart customers and Vizio users, and so that net new buyers at scale, that's what we're after,” Barmish said. “We can tell these brands how their content and stories are actually selling.”