Samsung and Rakuten studies signal European CTV move into retail media
New studies from Samsung Ads and Rakuten TV suggest that Connected TV (CTV) has reached a tipping point for advertisers in Europe, redefining retail media. The growth of CTV creates demand and influences consumers earlier in the purchase journey, with home screens becoming a new discovery environment for advertisers. This shift presents both opportunities for brands to influence consumers and challenges around fragmentation and measurement for retailers and ad-tech providers.
Key Takeaways
- Samsung Ads data shows nearly 90% of consumers use the TV home screen to decide what to watch next.
- Households in Europe currently use an average of five streaming apps, increasing management complexity for brands.
- Rakuten TV research indicates 100% of surveyed marketers intend to integrate CTV into their media mix to utilize home screen and pause-ad inventory.
- Retailers are increasingly using off-site CTV placements to leverage first-party purchase data for closed-loop attribution.
Why It Matters
The transition of the CTV home screen from a utility menu to a high-funnel discovery environment allows retailers to extend their media networks beyond owned websites. By matching retailer purchase data with streaming viewership patterns, brands can target specific consumer behaviors rather than broad demographics. This convergence of retail media and digital television addresses the reach limitations of social media while maintaining the measurement capabilities of performance marketing. Monitor the adoption of standardized measurement frameworks as the industry attempts to bridge the gap between large-screen impressions and verified commerce outcomes.
Additional Context
The expansion of retail data into the living room is accelerating through high-profile technical integrations. In April 2024, Roku and Roberta's parent company, Best Buy, expanded their partnership to provide advertisers with category-level purchase data to target CTV users more accurately. This mirrors moves in the U.S. market where Walmart's $2.3 billion acquisition of Vizio, announced in February 2024, signaled a definitive shift toward owning the hardware and operating system to secure first-party viewer data. Per eMarketer in March 2024, retail media is projected to be the fastest-growing ad spending category through 2027, increasingly cannibalizing traditional linear TV budgets as platforms enable 'shoppable' ad formats. Simultaneously, the technical infrastructure for these cross-platform campaigns is maturing. Per Digiday in May 2024, major ad-tech providers like The Trade Desk are increasingly pushing for Unified ID 2.0 adoption across European broadcasters to solve the fragmentation issues highlighted by Samsung and Rakuten. While European privacy regulations under GDPR create a more complex environment for data sharing compared to the U.S., the emergence of ‘clean room’ technology is allowing retailers and streamers to match audiences without exposing raw PII. According to a June 2024 report from IAB Europe, CTV ad spend in the region is expected to grow by double digits as programmatic access to premium inventory becomes the baseline for retail media networks seeking off-site growth.
Read full article at internetretailing.net
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