Walmart Connect's Ryan Mayward on Bringing Vizio Data to Magnite and the Yahoo DSP

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**Ari Paparo** (1:26)
All right, welcome to Marketecture, where you can get smart fast with in-depth interviews of leading technology executives. I am Ari Paparo, and I'm joined today by Ryan Mayward, the SVP and GM of Walmart Connect. Thanks for being here, Ryan.

**Ryan Mayward** (1:40)
Thanks for having me, Ari.

**Ari Paparo** (1:41)
Excited to talk. Walmart's always in the thick of things, the middle of some of the most exciting stuff going on in digital advertising. So, recent announcement that made some waves about integrating with Yahoo and Magnite.
Tell us about it.

**Ryan Mayward** (1:57)
Yeah. Well, we did make an announcement recently, involved four parties really, Yahoo, Magnite for the benefit of Vizio, and of course Walmart Connect was the driver of it. Essentially, what we announced was that Walmart Connect has integrated our audiences with Magnite, so sell-side decisionings, making our data available on Magnite in a completely controlled environment, targeting our audience segments as well as our measurement capabilities for the benefit of the Yahoo DSP to run campaigns on Vizio inventory using Walmart audience for targeting and for measurement. So, that's the announcement. I think there's a lot to unpack there, right?

**Ari Paparo** (2:42)
Simple four-way arrangement.

**Ryan Mayward** (2:45)
Yeah, exactly. And so, you know, why? Where did all this begin?
It started with Vizio, right? We acquired Vizio a couple of years ago now.
And when we acquired that company, we really saw it for three things. It's a device manufacturer, software company, right? They built the Vizio operating system for smart TVs and an ad business. And so, the calculus for Walmart was, how do we grow Vizio, right, as the largest seller of TVs in the US.? We had some options there. We can sell more Vizio TVs. And we can also apply the Vizio operating system to one of our other best-selling TV brands, which is our own, our private label brand, On, ONN. And so, we did that. And that's helping us expand household penetration for Vizio.
But in parallel, and as of March, the Vizio operating system was the number one selling operating system in the US., about one in five TVs shipped have Vizio OS powering them. So, it's exciting. That's working. But in parallel, we have the Walmart Connect business, where we've also had a CTV business for several years, powered by the Walmart DSP, which we built out years ago in partnership with the Trade Desk, where we've been applying Walmart audiences and measurement to Paramount Plus and NBCU and Disney and other inventory, and really doing it through this one buying channel. So, the task at hand was, how do we maximize the number of advertisers that can use Walmart data for audience targeting and measurement, and do so for Vizio, do it on Vizio inventory, while also holding true to one of Vizio's tenets as an advertising business, which is easy to buy, right? How do you reduce the friction for advertisers access Vizio? So that's what really we're grappling with, and led us to this Magnite-Yahoo partnership.

**Ari Paparo** (4:42)
Okay. This is super interesting. So the why go sell side? So you're integrating the data into Magnite sell side. It's a curation feel.
I guess I have multiple questions here. But start there. Why sell side first? Yeah.

**Ryan Mayward** (5:01)
It just gave us a lot of options. It was a flexible, lightweight way to get started. And also, it was adjacent to the place where Vizio is running their whole ad business essentially, right?

**Ari Paparo** (5:10)
Oh, yeah.

**Ryan Mayward** (5:11)
That makes sense. They use the SpringServe Magnite's domain SSP that they use, but they also use others like Index. And so that was just the natural place to start as the top sort of CTV SSP. It was where we felt like we got a great partner, very flexible, and were able to integrate our data in a way that we were really comfortable with.