Report: Walmart looking at Vizio acquisition to boost ad business

According to the Wall Street Journal, Walmart is in talks to buy Vizio to help its advertising business and better compete against Amazon.

Vizio might sell for over $2 billion to the large retailer. The “Walmart Connect” advertising unit reported $2.7 billion in global revenue in 2022. This acquisition would be “about growing advertising revenue, not selling more low-price TVs.”

That said, the WSJ notes how “Vizio is historically the largest television brand sold at Walmart by sales.” The TV brand makes more money from selling advertising and viewer data, as well as other partnerships, than hardware.

Walmart would be better able to compete with Amazon, and help diversify its revenue streams beyond selling products and groceries in stores. 

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.

If this deal goes through, with talks still ongoing, it will be interesting to see what happens with Walmart’s Onn technology brand, which includes sets running Google TV and Roku. Vizio televisions are powered by SmartCast and support Casting. (At one point, they made Android phones and Windows devices.)

It would make sense for Walmart to keep selling a streaming dongle for those that don’t want to buy a full television, while support for existing products would presumably continue for a period.