Walmart’s rumored plan to acquire Vizio went from theoretical to reality this week, with the retail giant set to pay $2.3 billion for the smart TV manufacturer. The move will bolster Walmart’s retail media offering, Walmart Connect, adding streaming capabilities that will help it attract more brand marketing ad dollars. The deal will also allow Walmart to add to its existing data at a time when the rapid growth of retail media has made the space more competitive and Amazon continues its effort to get a bigger slice of the market.
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The big piece is gonna be connecting the pipelines for measurement,” Steven Frey, director of integrated media planning at Media by Mother, said, adding that Vizio’s ACR data “is definitely something that Walmart has not dealt with in its current iteration. Connecting that into Walmart’s overall tech stack, I think is gonna be a pretty monumental lift but is probably where they’re going to get a lot of value.”
Frey continued, “If they can connect basically those data warehouses to enact full-funnel measurement, I think that’s where they really start unlocking the big value.”
Amie Owen, head of commerce at UM, echoed that sentiment: “The value is the data.”
Read more in Digiday.