NEW YORK—At the IAB NewFronts 2024, Samsung Ads announced a new lineup of premium sports, music, family and entertainment content on its leading FAST service Samsung TV Plus that included plans to launch FAST services with live sports from MLB, PGA Tour, F1, and ONE Championship on Samsung TV Plus.
Samsung TV Plus is announcing an exclusive partnership with Warner Music, which will bolster the nearly 500 existing premium national and local channels already on Samsung TV Plus. The Warner Music content will be available on Samsung's recently created Music destination.
“At Samsung Ads, we leverage Samsung innovation to deliver superior experiences to customers and advertisers alike,” said Michael Scott, vice president, head of ad sales and operations at Samsung Ads. “Our AI and data-driven advertising solutions will better help advertisers meet their objectives across the full marketing funnel, from achieving mass reach to bottom-of-funnel outcomes like customer acquisition. And, when combined with the number one reaching and most engaging FAST service, based on time spent viewing, Samsung TV Plus, advertisers will have a direct connection to audiences who frequently return for quality content.”
The new lineup of content included top sports, family and music content via a number of programming partnerships.
The service, which grew over 60% year-over-year, announced a suite of major league channels that will deliver live sports from Major League Baseball (MLB), The PGA TOUR, the American Hockey League (AHL), and ONEChampionship (MMA), along with Formula 1’s first FAST channel. These channels include:
- MLB: Samsung TV Plus and MLB are partnering up to bring the best of baseball coverage to FAST, allowing viewers to enjoy the MLB FAST channel with a weekly game replay, Minor league game replays, and game recaps, among other content exclusives to come later in the season.
- PGA Tour: This new offering will deliver total coverage on all things PGA TOUR, with behind the scenes programming, documentaries, tournament recaps, highlights, competitions, and more.
- AHL: Samsung TV Plus will be the first FAST platform to air live American Hockey League games through the Los Angeles Kings affiliate, the Ontario Reign.
- Formula One Channel: We’re also delighted to have Formula 1’s brand new FAST Channel at launch. The Formula 1 Channel is the ultimate destination for fans to catch up on all the action from F1, F2, F3 and F1 Academy races throughout the season, including analysis, replays and documentaries.
- ONE Championship TV: The launch of ONE Championship TV will bring combat sports content to the service. Featuring unique live events to TV Plus, highlights, series and behind-the scenes access from the world's largest martial arts organization.
- Music, Mattel, and More Arrive Exclusively
As part of the new partnership with Warner Music, Samsung TV Plus will also feature exclusive music playlists like:
- The Drop: A video on demand playlist experience that will tie to the launch of new album releases and will feature artist’s career retrospectives, behind the scenes content, interviews, premiere and new album content.
- Artist Odyssey: A chronological journey through a Warner artist's catalog. There will be never-before-heard stories about the videos that impacted generations—all told through firsthand accounts from friends, video directors, label heads, artist managers, fans, and sometimes the artists themselves.
The streaming platform noted that these channels come on the heels of Samsung’s milestone partnership with Mattel to launch three new channels, “Barbie and Friends by Mattel,” “Hot Wheels Action by Mattel,” and “Mattel Jr.” making the iconic kids brands available to families across the country for the first time ever, on a premium, brand-safe FAST platform, accessible through a dedicated kids entertainment hub.
“Since day one, creating a service that delivers the very best in entertainment for the entire family has been our focus, and with this newest suite of major league sports channels and first-to-FAST content from Mattel and the Warner Music Group, we’ve raised that bar to new heights,” said Salek Brodsky, senior vice president and GM, Samsung TV Plus. “This is not just the kind of programming that consumers love, but also the content that brands and advertisers are looking for at a scale, which only Samsung can deliver.”
In addition to the new content, Samsung Ads also showcased a number of new solutions for advertisers and its plans to use AI to increase the value of CTV advertising.
“At Samsung, we envision a future where intelligent, interconnected experiences enrich our lives. That's why we're prioritizing AI, as it is the cornerstone of our innovation,” said Cathy Oh, vice president, head of marketing, Samsung Service Business. “Through our ongoing investment in AI, we continuously push boundaries and set the benchmark for the Smart TV industry and in turn, fuel world-class solutions for advertisers.”
These efforts include:
- Samsung Ads is now providing advertisers new opportunities to connect their campaign messaging across both CTV and mobile. This new offering comes at a pivotal time as the Samsung News Galaxy mobile app is set to feature curated, up-to-the-minute Olympics content this summer in partnership with the International Olympic Committee. Starting next month, advertisers can now directly sponsor the Samsung News app on Galaxy devices with roadblocks that include both display and video ads in its top five editorial news sections.
- Samsung Ads is expanding its suite of AI-powered performance solutions, Smart Outcomes, with two new solutions. These new offerings come on the heels of the successful launch of Samsung Smart Audiences, combining the scale of Samsung’s ecosystem with the power of AI and machine learning to drive conversion:
- Smart Acquisition: Smart Acquisition is a new solution designed for content partners seeking to acquire new users with greater efficiency and efficacy. By leveraging Samsung’s proprietary data and unique AI technology, Smart Acquisition helps content partners by delivering their ads to the right person at the right moment to deliver the highest likelihood of conversion.
- CTV to Mobile: Designed for partners with mobile apps who are looking to acquire and engage with consumers with greater efficiency and effectiveness, this new solution enables advertisers to leverage Samsung’s unique Smart TV real estate paired with the company’s unique AI capabilities to acquire new users and drive engagement to their mobile apps. In addition, advertisers can prove more ROI by measuring return on ad spend through Samsung’s partnerships with the industry’s top mobile measurement providers.
- Sharper Measurement And Targeting Powered by Proprietary Data For “Optimal Reach”. Optimal Reach unlocks insights across linear and streaming to identify gaps in reach, unexposed audiences, and target “missed audiences’ at scale using machine learning through a single source solution that leverages a myriad of proprietary Samsung Ads data sources including its TV & You panel data, linear and in-app ACR data, as well as other data signals. Optimal reach can be used for reporting and targeting.
Samsung also announced plans to launch new interactive gaming experiences. The company said that it will be expanding games in a whole new way – transforming an ordinary ad break on Samsung TV Plus into a game break: an engaging, interactive gaming experience. With this new innovation, Samsung will allow more people to play and offer every kind of game for every kind of player, with no game controller required.
Later this year, Samsung will soon roll out new games to kick off new ways to play without a controller:
- Rivals Arena: A cinematic card game from Return Entertainment coming exclusively to Samsung TVs using any smartphone as a controller. Players can jump right in by grabbing their phone and scanning a QR code. Advertisers can sponsor Rivals Arena with interstitials in between gameplay and endemic brands will have an opportunity to cobrand the entire game experience.
- The Six: The Six is an interactive trivia game built directly into a Samsung connected device. Anyone with a Samsung TV remote can play The Six directly on their TV, while advertisers can cobrand the entire experience to drive brand engagement and recall.
- Samsung’s gaming offerings will continue to evolve with the introduction of new games that can be played in entirely new ways, with more on Samsung’s gaming initiatives, as well as how advertisers can get involved, coming soon.
Samsung Ads’ presentation was held at Lavan Midtown in New York City. For more information on Samsung Ads and the services available on Samsung Smart TVs, please visit www.samsung.com/us/business/samsungads/
