Walmart's Vizio Media Empire Play | Fast Five Shorts

Walmart plans to sell Vizio TVs exclusively as a private brand.

According to Bloomberg, Walmart Inc. Plans to make Vizio a private label brand by the end of the year and will sell its Smart TVs exclusively at Walmart and Sam's Club.

The retailer is bringing Vizio's operating system to its private label TV brand on that's O and and has been working on making TV a shoppable experience in which consumers can buy items while watching shows.

Walmart acquired Vizio last year for $2.3 billion.

Chris, this is also the A and M put you on the spot question.

At first glance, yes, Walmart's move with Vizio may just look like not wanting to share sales of a top five TV brand in the US but explain to us all why this move, starting with the 2024 Vizio acquisition to begin with, isn't just about hardware, but about advancing an exclusive media ecosystem across content, consumer data, advertising and commerce that benefits Walmart and branded suppliers.

All right, all those things, huh?

All right, I'll do my best.

You know, I mean, first of all, with the announcement, I'm not surprised by this and I'm not surprised by the announcement at all.

I mean, I think, I think I predicted it on this show when we discussed the merger last year, which is why I like the deal, because there's two sides to this deal, which gets us the question that A&M's inherently asking.

The first part is you inherently lock the competition out from selling what has traditionally been an entry level TV and you're forcing them to find another source, you know, right here, before the holidays too.

Now, hopefully you were smart enough to get prepared for that.

But the second piece of it is, and really this is what the core of the deal is really about for the most part, is Walmart gets the controlled substrate atop which it can experiment with the full power of connected TV retail media advertising.

It's all about connected TV and programmatic advertising at this point.

And in fact, like a recent IAB report, my favorite, I think IAB may be my favorite acronym because it reminds me of Star wars for some reason.

But the iab, the, the International Advertising Bureau, I think it's International Advertising Bureau.

I'm not exactly sure.

You probably know that better than I do.

But they said that ad buyers expect 47% of CTV inventory to be biddable this year.

That's up from 34% in 2024.

So there's still a lot of room to grow there.

And when buying CTV programmatically, 41% of buyers also believe it will drive a better return on investment and ad spend and 35% expect it to be easier to achieve scale.

So that's where things are going and if memory also serves, and one third of Walmart's current profit is coming from retail media.

So this whole move just supercharges that position.

That's what it's all about.

It gives Walmart profit upside down and therefore a competitive advantage against Costco, Target and other grocers, primarily not so much against Amazon, but against the other core of who Walmart competes with as it continues to reinvest what will become then over time, a disproportionate share of retail media dollars back into its business to drive growth.

So at net net, you know, people always use the expression like, you know, chess versus checkers.

Walmart and isn't just playing omnichannel chess to everyone else's checkers.

To me, it's more like they're playing a game of pickup basketball as adults against third graders, just squatting away everything that's in their way or, you know, or said another way, they're playing the long game and they're playing to their strength.

So that's, that's the core of what this whole Vizio acquisition is all about.

Yeah, I agree.

I mean, I think there's just, we have no idea just the upside that they still haven't even explored yet or the possibility that Walmart has here.

And I think when you do compare it against Amazon and some of the retail media revenue that they've, that, that Amazon has right now, like Walmart's still in the very early stages of starting to compete with that.

And so I, I do think that this is a really good moat for Walmart in the race against Amazon just because of this ecosystem that they're building.

And I think the other thing that you really have to take a look at here too, Chris, is think about the value of all of the data from Walmart customers.

You, you have them across all demographics that are going to be engaging with this.

A TV is a great way to get them engaged.

You know, you think about like being able to put this TV up in one of, in, you know, anybody's houses from, you know, people who are buying their first apartment all the way to, you know, somebody that's buying three of these Vizio TVs during Walmart plus days because they're the cheapest one and they're going to put them in three rooms of their house.

I think that's the thing that we're not talking about enough here is just the full 360 view that Walmart will be able to offer brands because they know about those people, what they're watching on TV and what they're engaging with, how they're interacting with their programs and Walmart plus and other, other behaviors online and they have store behaviors too, that they're going to be able to connect all this stuff together in ways that no one, not Target, not Amazon, not no one else can compete with.

And so I think this is really just the dawn of what we're going to see happen with Walmart and retail media and their potential here.

Yeah, you're dead right.

I mean, the retail advertisers are going to spend money with Walmart because their data is going to be better and they're going to actually be able to see the closed attribution of the sale too, easier than they can through other, you know, connected TV vehicles.

You know, go ahead.

Yeah, and the last thing too, I think is we haven't, we haven't really dug into the hardware value of this too.

I mean, I think when you look at like we, I just used the example of Prime Week last week, Amazon, what are they giving deals on?

They're giving deals on fire sticks, on Kindles, on all the things that Walmart is now going to be able to offer their consumers to.

And in addition to just being like, we have one of the cheapest, best quality TVs, we're also going to give you, you know, $50 back on your Walmart, your Walmart plus account if you buy like they just, this flywheel is just going to continue and continue and continue.

Um, and we, you know, right now people are focused on the retail media angle, but I also think there's a hardware benefit too of what Walmart's going to be able to do and how they're going to be able to drive traffic to their, their properties with something that's as big of a draw as a TV too.

Oh, 100%.

That's.

I was going to close this, this headline was, you know, it's not coincidental that they're planning this just in time, like three months out from Black Friday as well.

Right.

It's going to be a key piece of their merchandising strategy and I wouldn't be surprised if Walmart offers incredible, incredible deals.

They might tie it in with Walmart plus as well.

And it's going to get, and they're going to try to put this into as many households as possible, as soon as possible, starting with this Black Friday season.

So, yeah, I think it's a great move and net.

I can tell you really like it, too.

And you're starting off very, very energetic and excited, so.