• by Wayne Friedman , 5 hours ago

With heightened focus on key streaming platforms’ advertising areas, Samsung Ads says its highly viewed home screen is now available programmatically for brands to purchase.

The company says that for the first time, advertisers can buy its smart TV home screen placements programmatically through major demand-side platforms including The Trade Desk and Google's DV360, powered by Magnite's SpringServe.

This will start up globally in the third quarter of this year.

This comes after another big streaming platform -- Roku -- says it would be refreshing its home screen when it comes to personalization.

On Tuesday Michael Morris, media analyst of Guggenheim Securities estimates Roku will see major advertising lift from this.

“The redesigned home screen represents one of Roku's most significant monetization opportunities, yet it is only [around] 20% rolled out with full deployment expected over the coming months.”

He adds: “Management characterized home screen monetization as being in ‘very early innings’... Given the 125 million [U.S. households] who start their experience on the Roku home screen daily, the inventory opportunity is substantial.”

This comes as streaming platforms have changed their positions on DSPs -- not viewing them as competitors but partners to help with advertising sales.

Roku now has deals with Amazon DSP, Google DV360, Trade Desk, Yahoo, and AppLovin. Samsung TV Plus -- the platform on its Samsung smart TV devices -- joins the race.

While it doesn’t disclose its “active” smart TV households as Roku does, estimates from research via Parks Associates and Hub Entertainment Research says there are more than 77 million active Samsung Smart TV households.