So who's really buying Vizio?

Or why we need to wait until April to really know

Great news for Walmart, but less good news for Vizio data licensees. Walmart’s $2.3Bn acquisition of Vizio looks to supercharge Walmart’s advertising business and give them a massive platform to optimize their $4Bn a year of TV ad spend by connecting their first party data direct to the ad impression that hit the glass, thanks to Inscape’s industry leading ACR. (Full disclosure, I headed up Data Science at Inscape while we pioneered the data licensing business).

But wha't’s going to happen to all those businesses who have been building currency and measurement businesses off the back of Vizio’s data? It’s the only nationally representative dataset out there, and although the Joint Industry Committee is encouraging data sharing for streaming, there isn’t another behavioral dataset of scale that covers the entire country.

So what happens to iSpot, VideoAmp, ComScore, Nielsen, and all of the programming groups who have licensed the data?

First up, Nielsen will be delighted to see this happen. It makes their panel the only nationally representative way to see TV viewing again, but everyone else has massive strategic risk once their admittedly long term licensing deals come up for renewal.

Is Walmart really going to be in the data licensing business? It seems far fetched to think this is going to continue in the long run.

So what happens next?

There is a single paragraph in the press release from Walmart that has been significantly under-reported:

• VIZIO has the right to terminate the transaction within a 45-day period if, subject to the terms and conditions of the merger agreement, VIZIO receives and accepts a “Superior Offer” as defined in the merger agreement.

William Wang, the CEO of Vizio, is an extremely shrewd negotiator and this clause suggests to me that Vizio is still in play, at least until the beginning of April. So who might be looking at a counter-bid?

• Goldman Sachs invested $325m in iSpot back in 2022. With $2.5Tn of assets under management, they could certain afford to pony up around x8 that figure to roll up Vizio into iSpot, but without the security of the Vizio data, its not clear how much long term value iSpot will be able to realize. They also have LG data and a bunch of STB data (particularly from their 605 acquisition) but Vizio is likely to remain the backbone of their platform because of its national representativeness.

• VideoAmp have just gone through massive cuts in the workforce, and although it’s unclear how much revenue they get from it, they do have the lead in the emerging currency business. Their new CEO Peter Liguori has a history of executing on impressive roll-up deals so they shouldn’t be eliminated from the equation.

• Comscore’s share price is still languishing in the doldrums, and must look like a bargain to any private equity investor, Combining Comscore with Vizio would certainly make a unique asset in the market.

The challenge for all these measurement businesses is that they’ll really want to retain only the data licensing business, and not really be in the smart TV or advertising business, so who else might come in?

• Comcast is both an advertising, data and TV giant. They even have an emerging line of Smart TVs. For Comcast to counter offer would make a lot of sense. It protects the data licensing for their FreeWheel arm, supercharges their XClass Smart TV offering, and gives them an edge in CTV advertising.

• Best Buy is the only other retailer who might take a look. They sell a lot of Vizio TVs and aren’t going to want to sell Walmart TVs. They also launched an advertising business in 2022 that still has a long way to go. With a market cap of about $15B they’d likely struggle to raise the funds unless William Wang would accept a merger.

Whatever happens next, we shouldn’t plan on the Walmart acquisition going through until after that 45 day window is you. There’s too much at stake in the industry for other players to at least see if they can get a deal in play.

Personally, I’d love to see William and the team make a tonne of money, but I’d also like to see the data we built continue to be the cornerstone of next generation measurement.