VIZIO shakes up platform business
Details
Joseph O'Halloran
| 29 October 2020
In a move that the company says will integrate operations, accelerating evolution of operating systems and ad technology as well as dedicating more resources to innovation, US TV maker VIZIO announces significant changes to its organisational structure.
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The move will see the company’s data subsidiary Inscape — which fuelled recent transformations of the TV marketplace with the addressable linear advertising programme Project OAR offering glass-level audience insights and business-outcome measurement, has now folded all of its resources and operations into the VIZIO Platform business. Boasting a viewer opt-in base of over 16 million TVs in America, Inscape will continue to power select measurement and advertising use cases, but the engineering and technology teams will now be focused on using VIZIO’s detection capabilities to deliver advertising products for VIZIO Ads and improved viewing experiences via the SmartCast platform.

In addition to growth in the VIZIO Ads business, the company is experiencing an increase in investment by content and commerce companies seeking to reach people directly via their TVs, giving VIZIO an opportunity to create new experiences in the home while fostering a new entertainment dynamic between brands and content providers. “We are entering a new golden age of television, where the technologies can now deliver on the vision we have to delight and entertain viewers,” said VIZIO CEO and founder William Wang.

As well as changes in its technology business lines, the reorganisation has seen VIZIO make some critical executive moves. Michael O’Donnell has been named as chief revenue officer of the VIZIO platform business to oversee relationships with programmers, platform partners, advertisers and data products. O’Donnell led the adoption of VIZIO Ads’ direct-to-device ads business since its launch in December of 2019 and expanded VIZIOs relationship with media companies including Apple, Disney and NBCUniversal’s Peacock. Commenting on his new role he said: “Now is the time so many in the TV and advertising industries have talked about for years. If we retain our focus on delivering the best possible experience in the home, he best possible experience in the home, everyone supporting the new entertainment ecosystem will benefit.”

Zeev Neumeier, a stalwart of the automated content recognition (ACR) industry, will now serve as VIZIO’s chief innovation officer with responsibility for leading the design and development of next-generation experiences on existing and forthcoming VIZIO TV and soundbar products. Charbel Makhoul will lead Inscape as a product inside of the VIZIO engineering team.