According to a new report from the Wall Street Journal, Walmart is planning to buy Vizio, a smart television manufacturer, for USD 2 billion. Reportedly, Walmart wants to buy Vizio to expand its advertising business. Walmart could use Vizio’s TVs to show advertisements and gather viewer data, which could help the company’s advertising business and increase the sales of products from its offline/online stores at the same time. All of this could help Walmart to compete with Amazon in a better way.
“For example, an advertiser such as Procter & Gamble that sells goods inside Walmart stores could run an ad through Walmart’s advertising unit, then those ads could be shown to viewers on Vizio TVs. Finally, Walmart could potentially track those ads back to the purchase of goods.”
Reportedly, Vizion earns more money selling ads and viewer data and through other partnerships than it does selling TVs. Plus, “Vizio is historically the largest television brand sold at Walmart by sales.” That’s probably why Walmart has chosen to buy Vizio over other brands to expand its advertising business. If Walmart ends up buying Vizio, it would be interesting to see what it would do with the company’s Onn brand, which also sells Google TV-powered televisions just like Vizio does.
