Why launch Samsung Ads in Europe, and why now?
For four years, Samsung Ads has operated in the US, successfully using Samsung’s incredible scale of smart TVs and unique audience platform to bring advertisers new Advanced TV opportunities. With approximately 30 million ads-enabled Samsung Smart TVs across the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Russia, we were perfectly placed to take advantage of the growing demand for new TV advertising solutions. We’re creating new opportunities for advertisers to use our audience-based solutions and ad experiences to engage their target audiences. We help achieve greater measurability through unparalleled reach and intelligent use of our insights and analytics.
How do you see the TV landscape evolving in Europe?
According to SpotX, the UK Connected TV ad market is forecast to grow to €250m by 2020, making it the third-largest behind the US and China. Advertisers are leveraging Advanced TV solutions, particularly the insights Samsung Ads provides, to drive business results to help discover, define and understand new audiences.
Advertisers have heightened expectations of TV. To help educate the industry on the power of Advanced TV, we have joined the Board of the IAB UK and are working with them to undertake various research projects exploring the intersection between TV and digital.
How has the market embraced Samsung Ads in Europe? What challenges have you solved for advertisers?
We have had a team in place for [more than] six months and have been in extensive dialogue with various partners, witnessing strong demand for our solutions. Our unique insights differ from other analytical offerings as we can observe household-level viewing across devices that are connected to the TV, both VOD and linear, and additional parameters including ISP and TV Model.
Since our launch in the middle of 2018, we have partnered with approximately 100 clients across luxury, autos, entertainment and sports, and are active in 19 markets across Europe. Through our linear-reach-extension product, advertisers use our first-party insights and scale to identify households that missed their ad through linear TV ad campaigns.
Tell us about Samsung Ads' data set
We offer new ways to engage and interact with households using first-party data and insights through our Samsung Ads Smart 360 solution. We deliver viewing behaviour insights, at macro and micro campaign-planning level, showcasing how the TV and digital advertising ecosystems intersect.
Our platform helps advertisers discover viewers’ TV preferences, deliver relevant engagement experiences and measure the impact. It also offers a simple solution to consolidate Advanced TV media buys.
This is all done through our proprietary data, powered by Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) technology. We understand opt-in viewer preferences across TV channels and programmes, together with household-level device usage such as set-top boxes, games consoles and DVD/Blu-ray players. ACR is activated only when a household opts-in to interest-based ads during initial set-up.
ACR data fuels our platform to help advertisers and publishers make TV more actionable based on household-level behaviour. We know 88% of Samsung Smart TV households in the UK watch linear TV, 76% tune into linear and OTT, and 87% watch via OTT. They spend 66 hours a month watching linear TV and 39 hours via OTT.1
What excited you about advanced TV?
Audiences are increasingly agnostic to where content is produced and seek a strong discovery experience. Samsung’s One remote and UI helps households discover content across our TV platform, and our ad solutions help marketers reach these audiences as they move seamlessly from one content source to another. Advanced TV presents a tremendous opportunity for brands to reimagine how TV can be utilised to connect with key audiences. Our technology, combined with our scale, allows us to increase the efficacy of the way advertisers can reach, engage and measure the effectiveness of their respective campaigns.
For more information, please contact adsales@samsung.com or visit
(1) Samsung Consumer Electronics Proprietary Business Intelligence, Q1-19. Active in the past 12 months.