While TV has traditionally been seen primarily as a home for top-of-funnel brand-building campaigns, there’s been a renewed push in recent years from some companies in the TV world to compete for performance budgets.
Performance TV is nothing new, of course. Direct response TV ads have been around for decades. But the growth of streaming and the new targeting and measurement capabilities it enables deepens TV’s ability to deliver on performance campaigns. From established broadcasters like TF1 in France to ad tech startups like Vibe in the US, we’ve seen a range of businesses chasing the performance TV opportunity.
At its NewFronts presentation in New York today, Samsung Ads threw its hat in the ring, touting its performance credentials with several new product announcements.
A big part of Samsung’s performance TV offering comes through an expansion of its partnership with Amazon Ads, which will bring Amazon’s remote-enabled interactive video ads onto Samsung TVs. A partnership with Amazon’s DSP already allows buyers to use Amazon’s shopping data to target and measure campaigns on Samsung’s TV inventory. But this new partnership will allow brands to run interactive ads which audiences engage with directly on the TV set.
Any brands that sell their products on Amazon will be able to run an add-to-cart prompt within their creative, which viewers can click on via their remotes. Brands that don’t sell on Amazon, meanwhile, can use alternatives such as “send to phone” or “sign up today”.
For performance TV, one of the issues is that demonstrating direct results is more difficult compared with social channels, where audiences can click straight through from ads to purchase pages. And though click-through rates for interactive TV formats are unlikely to be as high as they are on mobile and desktop, creating a direct path from exposure to action should help demonstrate TV’s ability to drive direct results.
“Shoppable innovation is no longer a future concept, it’s the standard,” said Courtney Howell, head of agency development at Samsung Ads. “With our new Amazon integration and the expansion of Samsung Ads interactive ad capabilities, we’re transforming the biggest screen in the home into a fully shoppable, performance-driven platform where inspiration, engagement, and purchase happen in the same moment.”
Samsung says it is also leveraging AI to power its performance solutions, enabling more effective targeting and audience identification. New AI-powered contextual targeting capabilities are designed to ensure ads show up at the right moment, helping drive performance, while AI will also be used to identify individuals who are most likely to engage, convert, or respond to an ad.
Live content, creators, and creator-fronted live content
One of the primary avenues for Samsung to run these campaigns is through its own free ad-supported streaming TV app Samsung TV Plus. And as the company invests in content to grow its audience further, it’s betting on live shows and creator-led formats.
“Live, interactive experiences and creator-led content have become the new engine of TV, bringing authenticity, community, and cultural connection directly into the living room,” said Salek Brodsky, SVP and global head of Samsung TV Plus. “As Samsung TV Plus looks to the future, our intention is to create meaningful moments that break through.”
The FAST platform will begin airing live races from North American motorcycle road racing series MotoAmerica for the 2026-27 seasons, and will air a two-hour live event fronted by YouTuber Mark Rober. It will also broadcast its first original docuseries ‘Hooligans: The ARCH Racing Project’, following actor Keanu Reeves and ARCH Motorcycle co-founder Gard Hollinger’s entry into the world of professional racing.
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