Samsung report: European viewers launch 18.4 billion apps as fragmentation accelerates
Samsung Ads' "Behind the Screens 2026" report, based on 70 million European smart TVs, reveals increasing CTV fragmentation, with average app launches up 8% in 2025. The report highlights that younger viewers use 21% more apps, shifting loyalty from platforms to content, making the home screen crucial for discovery and advertising strategy. Samsung Ads is a vendor providing advertising solutions for streaming.
Key Takeaways
- Total app launches reached 18.4 billion in 2025 across 70 million Samsung smart TVs in Europe.
- Younger audiences use 21% more apps on average and move fluidly between SVOD and free ad-supported platforms.
- The home screen is accessed more than five times daily, with 90% of viewers using it as their primary discovery tool.
- Gaming audiences are 88% more likely to follow home screen recommendations and 135% more likely to research products seen in ads.
- Linear viewing is highly concentrated, with 24% of Samsung TV sets accounting for 81% of all linear consumption.
Why It Matters
The rise in app-hopping confirms that the CTV home screen has superseded individual apps as the primary gateway for audience retention. As consumers prioritize content over platforms, the historical "channel-hopping" behavior has evolved into a smartphone-like app ecosystem where loyalty is non-existent. For advertisers, this fragmentation necessitates a move toward holistic, device-level targeting like Samsung’s TotalView to capture viewers who are increasingly unreachable through traditional linear or single-service buys. Watch for whether conversion metrics for home screen "hero" units begin to command higher premiums than mid-roll inventory as discovery becomes the industry's most valuable bottleneck.
Additional Context
The data from Samsung aligns with a broader industry trend where hardware manufacturers are pivotally shifting from device sales to high-margin platform services. Per VideoWeek (May 2026), Roku’s Q1 2026 platform revenue—which includes home screen display ads—rose 28% year-over-year to $1.13 billion, while its hardware revenue simultaneously fell 16%. This shift underscores the home screen's growing role as a crucial ad inventory source; Roku recently redesigned its UI to make its "Marquee" ad unit visible immediately upon launch to increase click-through rates. Similarly, LG Ad Solutions introduced its "Own the Outcome" framework at the 2026 IAB NewFronts (March 2026), focused on verifying on-screen conversions and launching full-frame video ads directly into the LG TV startup interface. This aggressive monetization of the OS layer comes as the gap between viewership and spend remains wide. Per EMARKETER (March 2026), CTV captured over 20% of media time in 2025 but only roughly 8% of total ad spend, presenting what analysts call a significant arbitrage opportunity. Retailers are also entering the fray to control this discovery point; per Marketing Dive (May 2025), Walmart’s $2.3 billion acquisition of Vizio has already boosted its global advertising business by 50% year-over-year in fiscal Q1 2026. As OEMs like Samsung, LG, and Vizio (via Walmart) gain more deterministic data from their active footprints, the industry is moving toward a "walled garden" model of the living room, where the operating system, rather than the content provider, dictates the terms of audience access.
Read full article at content-technology.com
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