• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, July 25, 2025

Coming in the second half of 2025, another smart TV operating system is on the way -- from The Trade Desk, the big demand-side advertising platform with a new smart TV OS called Ventura.

The trouble is, for The Trade Desk, what TV manufacturers will sign on?

Many large TV brands such as Samsung, LG and Vizio are already committed to their own TV operating systems and/or are partnered with powerful players.

Roku and Amazon Fire TV are, of course, major players -- now with their own branded smart TV sets, after initial partnerships with TV set manufacturers.

For Roku this includes TCL, Hisense, Sharp, RCA, JVC and Philips. For Amazon, it’s Toshiba, Insignia, Panasonic and others.

Now many of these deals may not be exclusive and for all models, so Trade Desk may have some room to move.

Linking up with their own smart TV OS system for DSPs (Roku, Amazon, Google, and now Trade Desk) for viewer server data is important when pairing with their own media-buying platforms.

The marketplace of selling smart TVs is rapidly changing -- now with Walmart ramping up efforts for its newly acquired Vizio TV set maker, which has its own SmartCast OS. Walmart has a leading 55% market share of TV set sales of the 18 million TVs.

Of the 10 million TV sets Walmart sells, Richard Greenfield, media analyst at LightShed Ventures, estimates 3 million to 4 million come from the company’s ONN branded TV sets. Adding Vizio TV sets will mean 5 million sold in total (Vizio and ONN) by 2026, he estimates.

As previously reported, Roku will take a hit from the Walmart/Vizio combination -- as it is about two-thirds of all the TV set sales at Walmart.

And now another competitor comes into the room.

On The Trade Desk’s side to compete with a new smart TV OS is long time mantra: Transparency, this for advertisers/brands in terms of pricing, financial benefits and measurement - especially in the open internet.

This is the world Ventura sees clearly. Now wonder if TV makers will also buy in to that vision, Maybe just do a little window shopping?