Vizio to Unveil Analytics Tool, Ad Innovations at First In-Person NewFronts

It’s only Vizio’s second year in the NewFronts, but the connected TV company is ready to make a splash in the marketplace by emphasizing data in its first in-person presentation. Ahead of Monday afternoon’s event at New York's Moonlight Studios, Adam Bergman, vp of national ad sales, told Adweek that while Vizio may have been the new kids on the block last year, the connected TV company has made “big waves” in the market. “We’re much more in a must-have category in the advertiser community, not only responding last year in terms of economic commitment, but also just the relationships we've built,” said Bergman. Vizio looks at its business in terms of four key asset environments: audience, platform, inventory and content, and data. “The most important component of our business is the integration of hardware and software. The fact that everything we do is driven and framed around consumer experience,” said Bergman. “From the UI, the design, the look and feel of our operating system, to the way we use data to consider content we want to program and how we promote it, ad products and targeting, all of that is built on the integrated hardware and software approach.” Introducing Vizio Analytics Today the company is launching Vizio Analytics, a suite of solutions and platform integrations designed to help advertisers plan, target, measure and optimize multi-platform campaigns. “As we bring Vizio Analytics really more to the forefront, it's about not just talking about ad products, but also validation of business outcomes,” said Bergman. “I think more than ever right now advertisers are looking to drive their business forward.” Part of Vizio Analytics includes a new dashboard, which serves as a planning tool aiming to help advertisers understand incremental audience reach and frequency generated by Vizio Ads on top of linear TV spend. Essentially, it allows advertisers to see reach frequency in real time. Over the past several years, Vizio has spent time with advertisers validating lift on website traffic, tune-in and purchase. “We've been measuring all of these outcomes, and now we're really putting a new sheen on it, and we've repackaged it as Vizio Analytics,” said Bergman. “We’re excited to really showcase how the data that the entire marketplace is trusting in currency is used every single day in our business, both for ad targeting, as well as for measurement.” The company also said that Analytics will allow advertisers to measure and validate ad impact against a variety of KPIs and gives advertisers insight into bottom-of-the-funnel metrics. New advanced advertising offerings Vizio will debut its new advanced advertising product Jump View, a new offering that Bergman described as “consumer first.” Jump View is an interactive overlay that, when a consumer finishing watching an episode in a linear environment, a pop-up window offers to take the viewer to a streaming environment to continue the show. It was first tested earlier this month by Fox with Welcome to Flatch. The company will also be highlighting Vizio Enact, its linear addressable approach, that aims to enable national advertising in connected television. “[Enact] spawns out of our multi-year work around linear addressability and what we’ve been doing with advertisers in the last year,” said Bergman. During last year’s presentation, Vizio revealed three advanced ad offerings, which Bergman said will now have “added sophistication.” Household Connect enables advertisers to target consumers on other devices based on what is viewed on their Vizio smart TVs. There's also its True Incremental Reach product, which uncovers the percentage of ad impressions that hit unreachable households that are not exposed to advertising on linear or broadcast formats, and Universal Frequency Control, which allows brands to set limits on how often a spot is delivered via Vizio’s CTV offering. Emphasis on content Bergman said that its in-house AVOD WatchFree+ has been “totally rebooted” since last year’s upfront, and now has more than 250 live free streaming channels, and added more than 5,000 titles in an on-demand library. “Not only have we rebuilt and recaptured the content programming side of it, that also means we've completely rebuilt the ad inventory access, which advertisers really respond to,” said Bergman. The company first debuted its data-informed programming arm Vizio Features during last year’s presentation, and Bergman said the company will “absolutely shine a light on it" this year as well.