Walmart said buying Vizio will give it new ways to appeal to advertisers and that those ad efforts would be further fueled by Walmart’s high-volume sales of TVs. Walmart said today that Vizio’s Platform+ ad business has “Over 500 direct advertiser relationships, including many of the Fortune 500” and that SmartCast users have grown 400 percent since 2018 to 18 million active accounts. Data gathered from Vizio TVs will be combined with data on shoppers that Walmart already gets. Walmart plans to use this customer data to sell targeted ad space, such as banners above Walmart.com search results, and to help advertisers track ad results.

Source: Walmart buying TV-brand Vizio for its ad-fueling customer data