Ad-supported Samsung TV Plus now available in UK and Europe

22 Apr 2020

Samsung's ad-supported video service, Samsung TV Plus, has now been made available to brands and agencies in a number of European markets, following a series of advertising technology partnerships.

Samsung Ads Europe, the media and advertising division of Samsung Electronics, has partnered with SpotX, Wurl and Amagi to enable programmatic advertising across the service in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and Austria.

Samsung TV Plus is a pre-installed, free service on Samsung 2016-2020 model Smart TVs. The business claims it is one of the top OTT services on Samsung's Smart TV platform across Europe, with "millions" of monthly active users and "billions" of viewing minutes per month.

“With our scale, technology and proprietary data, we’re uniquely placed to offer this free, OTT video service across millions of Samsung Smart TVs in Europe," said Alex Hole, vice president at Samsung Ads Europe.

“It provides viewers with the ability to discover and access high quality content for free and gives advertisers new and innovative ways to connect with audiences that are shifting their viewership behaviours between linear and OTT.”

According to Samsung, agencies including Publicis and Omnicom Media Group UK are already utilising the video service to reach audiences that are using ad-supported video on demand services to access content.

Martin O'Boyle, managing director, partners at Publicis Media Exchange, said: “Samsung TV Plus provides our clients with the opportunity to engage with a hard to reach heavy OTT audience programmatically in the Samsung Smart TV environment.

“With the first party deterministic data Samsung Ads has available, we can now start to understand the impact OTT/VOD is having, but more importantly, how we can engage with this new type of TV watcher.”

The service delivers access to over 47 channels in the UK, with plans to expand the line-up to over 70 channels by the end of 2020.

Samsung TV Plus is also set to expand into more markets this year, featuring content from local and relevant channel partners such as Endemol Shine, Rakuten TV, Pluto TV, Studio 71, Jukin Media, VOD365 and Insight TV.

According to Digital TV Research, 17 countries are expected to exceed $1bn in over-the-top (OTT) revenue by 2023.

The UK is predicted to be the world’s third largest OTT market with a revenue of $6.8bn, followed in Europe by Germany at $3.8bn.


Source: Michaela Jefferson, Mediatel News