Walmart Is Linking Your TV Watching to What You Buy | Fast Five Shorts

Walmart and Vizio unveiled new content to commerce integrations at the 2026 IAB Newfronts this week.

I know something that Carter follows religiously.

Whatever happens at newfronts, he's all about that.

Introducing a unified account login, a first of its kind l' Oreal product placement partnership and a closed loop measurement vision that ties streaming behavior directly to in store and online purchases.

According to Chainstoreage, Walmart and Vizio are progressively implementing a unified account login to new Vizio OS TVs and on TVs powered by Vizio, Enabling customers to use Walmart accounts to access smart TV features.

Creating a single identity framework across shopping and entertainment.

In addition, l', Oreal, the world's largest cosmetics company, is launching a product placement integration that will place l' Oreal products within premium content across Vizio's OS in the US Powered by Walmart's first party customer insights.

I'm curious to understand what that actually looks like in practice.

And said Courtney Nado, SVP of Business integration and Planning at Walmart, quote, by unifying account access, we're creating a seamless experience across screens while laying the groundwork for deeper integration between retail and entertainment.

End quote.

Carter, are you buying or selling Walmart?

Connect Powered by Vizio becoming a powerful, meaningful new tent pole for Walmart's retail media strategy.

I think it's, it's huge for Walmart just because of the data.

Like if you think about this, right?

So you talk about basically and for a lot of families, you know, your TV in your living room is the hub of the family, right?

You're constantly watching.

And what you can deduce from family dynamics based on looking at what you're watching, when you're watching and what that looks like is absolutely massive to start to understand now.

You know, critics will say that this is ultimately a surveillance device that's sitting in your living room.

And yeah, it is like that's exactly what it is.

But this move from, from Walmart, you know, it's kind of about time, right?

It's been two years since they kind of made this acquisition.

Two years since they made this investment and there really hasn't been any meaningful moves really from it, from it at all.

And the ability to have this unified login at the OS level, right?

So think about it.

Anything you do on that TV is documented and given to Walmart to then target ads.

And not only ads in the tv.

I know that was part of it.

But your first party profile for Walmart is going to just absolutely Explode.

Which means that your targeted ads, your deals when you're online, etcetera, Are now going to get that much better.

And I think here's the deal is also Walmart had to do this.

When you think about what Amazon has and has had for a long time now, whether it's with Prime Video and just their dominance in the retail media network world, like this is a move they had to do or else they're just going to keep getting buried.

Yeah, the interesting thing to me when I think about this story is actually what I learned from you when we were first talking and I remember we were on the speaking circuit together a couple times and you always talked about the idea of, you know, you're competing for time, you're competing for the time on the phone.

And so Walmart, you know, as successful as Ben is still limited by the amount of time people want to spend with its app on the phone, on the substrate of the phone.

Amazon is in a sense too.

And so with this move though, Walmart is broadening out the substrate and the amount of time with which they can capture and capture an individual's attention, because now they can capture that individual's attention once they're logged in for everything they're watching on that substrate.

What.

Which is not something they can do on a phone and not something Amazon can do on a phone.

And I looked it up, there's 12, there's the estimates from Google.

When I looked it up, there's 12 to 18 million people that actively have their data connected to Vizio TVs.

Like that's how many people in the US minimally right now.

And so that's only gonna grow over time.

And so when you think about this, that gives them so like you said, Carter, it's 100% right.

That gives them so much more power to understand what, where an individual is putting their attention throughout the course of a day, both on their phone and on the screen in front of them.

And that's just going to make the advertising so much more powerful.

And that's why I think I agree.

I was actually a little surprised to hear you say that because I've had some people poo poo this headline over, you know, since it got announced two years ago.

But I think it's going to be pretty meaningful in the long run because, you know, Vizio's a, it's got a sizable chunk of the population and Walmart's going to keep pushing it.

Here's an interesting spin on it too.

Chris, do you think that there's a potential that Vizio TVs could be 50% of the cost of the next biggest competitor.

Because they can justify this idea, right?

So if I can buy a 70 inch TV for a hundred bucks at Walmart, like think about the ability for the idea of an average American family to get a brand new TV for next to nothing because ultimately you're paying with your data and for Walmart to justify that just based on how much they get to know about you.

Yeah, the merchant in me says 100% Carter.

So if I'm the merchant and I'm looking at this and Walmart is filled with great merchants, I would be saying okay, as soon as I'm comfortable that that login process is easy and friction free and is going to work for the majority of people.

Because we probably get one shot at this.

We're going big on Black Friday with 70, 75 inch screen TVs at the hottest deal you can imagine.

Because we're gonna want this data platform inside of as many homes as possible and we're gonna go big into it 100%.

That's what the move is, right?

Yeah, I think that's a great point.