Vizio Debuts Branded Content Studio, Refreshed Home Screen at NewFronts

Despite connected TV companies being in the NewFronts for only a few years, brands like Vizio have become a dominant part of the annual conversations.

The company made an impression with advertisers last year, with Vizio closing its 2023 upfront negotiations in October and securing more than $200 million in commitments, a 100% increase.

So this year, ahead of Monday afternoon’s IAB NewFronts event at New York’s Penn 1, Adam Bergman, Vizio’s group vp of advertising and data sales, told Adweek that the company is set to make a splash.

“In the three years we’ve been surrounded in the NewFronts cycle, our ads business has grown in exponential rates,” Bergman said. “And we’ve earned a seat at the table.”

This year’s show will feature presentations from multiple executives from Vizio, including a chat with founder and CEO William Wang. In addition, the company’s leader will give a sneak peek of future enhancements on the way.

“We’ll talk about the history of Vizio, how [Wang] started this business as a minority-owned media company. It’s a huge moment for us to talk about how we’ve changed the landscape and how advertisers think about devices,” Bergman said.

Hello, branded content

Though Vizio has had sponsorship and integrations for years on its platform, such as a TurboTax integration with the Big Game/Super Bowl hub or a Progressive sponsorship of DIY channel Vizio House, the company is getting in on the branded content wave.

The company is now gearing up to launch the Vizio Branded Content Studio (VBCS). This new business unit will bring new content offerings to viewers and new avenues for brands to invest their dollars.

“The entire ad business was built around product placement, but we have a few key aspects of our approach that we think are distinct,” Bergman said.

Vizio Ads can also bring this brand-integrated content to its home screen, which means premium branded content can have prominent placement on its platform.

The company first tested the new model with the four-episode mid-form series 3 Pointers, featuring Food Network’s Casey Webb and presented by BetMGM. Building off internal data that showed 42% of Vizio’s audience are “foodies” and 75% love sports, the company launched the show in time for March Madness and NBA playoffs.

“The challenge in branded content has always been, ‘How do I get this great piece of content to the right audience?’” Bergman said. “We have the audience and scale; we have the distribution with the unique nature of our smart TV platform. And then we’re uniquely informed by our TV viewership data.”

A host of other committed sponsors will be announced shortly, but Monday, Vizio plans to unveil four upcoming shows to the VBCS, which will serve as a demonstration of possible content for future advertisers.

Other big hits

The Home Screen is set to take center stage on Monday, with a sneak peek of a reimagined and immersive design that Vizio says will deliver more intuitive, relevant and personalization features. That includes enhancements for media and entertainment companies to promote content, including auto-play video, content deep links, trailers, storefront links and QR code activations.

Additional sponsorship opportunities include thematic hubs, custom carousels, programming sponsorships and timely activations. 

The presentation will also heavily future Vizio’s Inscape ACR data introduced during last year’s upfront, which formed the basis of the Vizio Analytics tool. Five of the seven leading measurement companies utilize Inscape data, and Bergman wants to show how Vizio has transformed from a hardware company into a fully-integrated platform.

“Every advertiser in the room is losing scale in cable, and they need to regain eyeballs,” Bergman said. “Using our TV viewership data, we can find households in which brands have lost reach, lost frequency and close that gap for you.”

That also comes into play with the idea of moving beyond the traditional 15 and 30-second ad pod formats. Vizio will add enhancements to its Interactive Ads and Household Connect offerings, which it said drive a greater lift in brand metrics and extend TV-first campaigns to additional devices within a household.

“We can analyze week-by-week reach frequency metrics, conversion metrics; prove that real people are buying real products; and quantify the impact of the investment,” said Bergman.

The Vizio Bus returns

Those that attended last year’s upfront may have checked out the interactive Vizio Bus, which demonstrates all the features highlighted at the presentation.

The bus returns in 2023 outside the venue and will be spotted at various locations around New York during the week.

For Bergman, the bus provides an opportunity for brands and marketers to experience the company’s smart TVs hands-on.

“Buyers tend to forget that they’re customers as well, so putting a real-live remote in their hands and standing them in front of our televisions—showcasing the speed, the intuitive design, the organic fluid nature of our platform—brings everything to life,” Bergman said.

“So much of the ad business and so much of the media business is this strange amalgam of PowerPoint decks and PDFs,” the exec added. “We’re talking about real people who stand in front of real products and watch television.”