Consumers spend approximately 11 minutes deciding what to watch when they turn on their televisions, creating a premium opportunity for native advertising placements that influence content selection and brand messaging before streaming begins.
“The first thing that you see when you turn on your TV is, well, what do I want to watch? The average consumer spends about 11 minutes deciding exactly just that,” Courtney Howell, head of Agency Development at Samsung Ads, told Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan during Advertising Week NY 2025. “With our native ad placements, it’s a very rich storytelling canvas to enable brands to leverage that to help influence the consumer journey.”
This pre-content decision window represents untapped inventory distinct from traditional streaming ad placements, leveraging Samsung’s position as the world’s largest smart TV producer with over 80 million devices in the U.S.
Device-level deterministic data
Samsung’s ownership of the television hardware provides deterministic, real-time data at the device level that spans linear viewing, streaming apps, gaming, fitness, and shopping behaviors within households.
“Because we own all of the data and insights associated with the screen, we’re able to leverage that deterministic data to help and support brands in several different ways,” Howell said.
This comprehensive dataset enables pre-campaign planning insights, real-time optimization during execution, and post-campaign measurement across all screen activities rather than limiting visibility to individual app or platform behaviors.
Complementing CTV upfront deals
As brands prioritize connected TV in upfront negotiations, native placements on the TV operating system level provide complementary reach that captures audiences before they select streaming destinations.
“It all starts when you turn on your TV,” Howell said, noting the shift in consumer behavior toward streaming and smart television adoption over the past five to seven years.
Samsung has expanded beyond its initial large immersive native units to offer multiple brand advertising formats that enable varied calls-to-action, from learning more about products to driving specific conversions like test drive requests.
Full-funnel capabilities
Connected TV serves upper, middle, and lower funnel objectives rather than fitting into a single category, with Samsung’s portfolio addressing different marketer needs through machine learning and AI-driven optimization tools.
“CTV can be all things to all marketers. We can help you achieve all different types of brand metrics, whether it be specific outcomes like purchases, it could be to click a link for a test drive, but it also can be upper funnel,” Howell said.
Success requires identifying KPIs upfront and matching solutions to those objectives, then using real-time optimization to ensure campaigns deliver against goals that matter most to individual brands.
NFL opportunities
The NFL season shows how native TV placements enable brand marketers to reach engaged audiences regardless of official sponsorship status, creating alignment opportunities with consumers tuning in for games.
“Think about brand marketers that are either official sponsors of specific teams and or the NFL in general, or just brands that want to associate and align with those individuals that are tuning in to watch NFL,” Howell said. “What a great canvas to either promote a brand message or specific type of action.”
Upstream collaboration
Scalable CTV strategies require early communication between platforms, agencies, and brands, with Samsung encouraging partners to engage during ideation phases rather than waiting until campaigns are finalized.
“If you’re able to bring us in as far upstream as possible, even when you’re starting to think about ideation or what a campaign launch or new product launch might look and feel like, we can bring in our team of experts to provide some advice and input of different examples of campaigns,” Howell said.
“Communication is the foundation both professionally and personally of everything that we do,” Howell said. “Having a very symbiotic relationship, both on the platform tech side of things, also with our agency partner only leads to better results.”