With people more comfortable going into stores, television advertising for many major retailers was way up during the holiday season.

According to an analysis by Samba TV, Walmart, the top advertiser in the fourth quarter, increased its number of TV impressions by 20% from a year ago. 

Target’s impressions were 35%, Kohl’s grew 25% and Macy’s were up 34%, according to Samba TV.

Traditional retailers represented four of the top 10 advertisers during the fourth quarter. In addition to Walmart in the top slot, Target was No. 6, Kohl’s was No. 7 and Macy’s was eighth. 

Also: Ho Ho Ho! Holiday Programming Paid Off for Hallmark, NBC, Freeform

Walmart, Target and Macy’s did not rank in the top 10 during the third quarter.

Also breaking into the top five was Amazon. Amazon did not rank in the top five in the fourth quarter of 2020 despite the high volume of online shopping during the first COVID christmas, Samba TV noted. 

Some retailers focused on the Hispanic market. Target generated the most impressions advertising on Telemundo, followed by Univision. For Walmart, Univision and UniMás were the No. 2 and No. 3 networks in terms of impressions.

Looking just at the peak holiday season, between Black Friday and Christmas, retailers pulled out the stops when it came to TV advertising, Walmart, Target, Kohl’s and Macy’s all served more than 1.5 billion impressions, as did Amazon. 

Samba TV said Kohl’s did the best job in achieving reach while limiting frequency. The average household exposed to Kohl’s ad during the holidays saw 22 of them. Households that saw ads for Walmart saw 42 of them and households that saw Target ads saw 32 of them. Those retailers were more likely to reach oversaturation and annoy potential shoppers, Samba TV said.

“With the viewership landscape more fractured than it’s ever been, it’s never been more imperative for marketers to utilize a holistic view across both linear and streaming,” Samba TV VP of measurement Cole Strain said. “By leveraging Samba TV’s independent, first-party data set culled from 40-plus million devices marketers can truly understand their audience reach and true ROI.” ■

Despite reports of its demise, Xperi said it’s not done selling the TiVo Stream 4K device. But there's definitely a shift in retail strategy happening for this connected TV HDMI dongle. 

Now selling at the clearance-level price of $29.99, the streaming device appears to be exiting its previous go-to retail hub, Walmart, and is now taking up shop at Target. 

Last week, Wolfpoint Group, a company that helps retailers including Target launch new wares, announced that its client is launching the “TiVo 4K streamer product.” The TiVo Stream 4K is currently available at Target for $29.99, discounted from its previous $49.99 MSRP.

(This announcement surfaced when influential technology writer David Zatz, a longtime TiVo observer, noticed that the TiVo Stream 4K seems to be getting phased out of Walmart and Best Buy, drawing the ire of a Wolfpoint Group rep.)

Featured in prime Walmart “endcap” in-store locations last year, shortly after its April 2020 launch, the TiVo Stream 4K does seem to be getting superseded at America’s biggest big box store by Walmart’s own, new Onn-branded Android TV streaming device, which is also priced to move at $30. And the Stream 4K isn't even available at Best Buy, a longtime go-to destination for TiVo DVRs. (A TiVo rep told Next TV Thursday that the company is still selling products at Best Buy, but it is "in the process of switching from a third-party vendor to a direct sales relationship.")

The Target announcement comes amid overall confusion over TiVo Stream 4K’s fate. 

In early May, TiVo’s new parent company, Xperi, said that it was pivoting away from Android TV, the software that TiVo Stream 4K is based on, with Google now also planning to use the OS as a foundation for its own search-and-recommendation UX overlay software, Google TV. 

Xperi said its plan now is to deploy the TiVo Stream 4K software, sans Android TV, as a smart TV OEM operating system, competing with Roku and Google TV. 

“What has changed is last fall, Google came out and said that they intend to go beyond their core OS level offering and really get into the UX business, and in so doing, it eclipses one’s ability to think [they can] reasonably be an alternative that might otherwise live on their lower level platform,” said Xperi CEO John Kirchner to equity research analysts during Xperi’s first-quarter earnings call on May 5. 

A number of folks in the tech media interpreted that to mean that Xperi is pivoting away from its TiVo Stream 4K HDMI dongle—a read certainly not undermined when Xperi cut the price of existing inventory by 40%.

Xperi reps didn’t immediately respond to Next TV’s inquiry for clarity on the TiVo Stream 4K go-to-market strategy. However, the company told TechHive last month that new iterations of the TiVo Stream 4K device are on the way, and that Xperi is still making TiVo Stream 4K hardware “and will continue to do so.”

NEW YORK — There was data, data everywhere at the Digital NewFronts as digital media companies aimed to convince advertisers to spend more on sponsoring streaming programming.

Broadcast and cable networks have been looking to use data to more precisely target ad campaigns as TV viewing shrinks and commercials get more expensive. But NewFront presenters said they have better information about viewers and their networks are addressable, making them able to send the right messages to the right consumers.

Among the presenters at last week’s gatherings were giant retailers Walmart and Target, both of which are looking to boost media businesses based on data they gather from the people who shop in their stores.

“We invite you to leverage our first-part shopper data by delivering highly relevant and accountable advertising,” Walmart Media Group general manager Stefanie Jay said. “We know how people shop on an unparalleled scale.”

Vudu Adds Originals

At its presentation, Walmart said it was adding original series programming to its on-demand, ad-supported video service Vudu. It said it would be the first to show the new version of Blue’s Clues, even before Nickelodeon, and would have series featuring actress Evangeline Lilly and produced by Queen Latifah.

During the shows, Vudu will be running a limited number of commercials. It also runs shoppable ads, which pop up on the screen, can be clicked on with a remote control and are directly connected to the viewer’s Walmart.com account.

More importantly, Walmart knows what its viewers buy and can tell an advertiser if an ad campaign resulted in more of their product being bought in Walmart stores or at Walmart.com. And soon, advertisers will be able to use Walmart data to buy ads and evaluate campaigns on other over-the-top networks.

Target told a similar story. The retailer last week renamed its media business Roundel.

Roundel will send “the right ad to the right people at the right time on the right channels, whether that be on our Target platforms or off platform with other publishers,” said Kristi Argyilan, president of Roundel.

“We’re not just operating a retail media network,” Argyilan said, adding that Roundel is putting marketer messages into non-Target channels, including display, social, audio or even linear TV, based on shopper data.

YouTube pointed to its huge number of users and said the engagement it generates helps advertisers sell products. Alan Thygersen, president, Americas, for Google, pointed to statistics showing that YouTube was able to generate incremental reach for campaigns with much lower frequency levels than TV. Google Preferred campaigns also generate great sales per impression than TV.

As a result, “we should all be allocating a lot more to YouTube,” Thygersen told media buyers and clients attending its Brandcast.

YouTube said its originals, including Karate Kid sequel Cobra Kai, would all have ad-support windows where they’re not behind a paywall.

Viewer Data on Display

Hulu also showed off how much it knows about its viewers. Research head Jaya Kolhatkar said nearly 50% of ad-supported hours of viewing on Hulu are spent binge-watching and 40% of Hulu viewers binge more than one series each month.

Naturally, Hulu is creating an ad format designed to appear when viewers are binging shows. Binge ads are personalized and a sponsor could offer to let the viewer see the next episode of a show they’re watching without ads.

Hulu ad sales head Peter Naylor said that Hulu’s 58 million ad-supported viewers include 21 million cord-cutters and cord-nevers that can’t be reached via traditional TV.

“Now’s the time to shift even more of your budget to Hulu,” Naylor said.

Viacom apparently feels that if you can’t beat them, join them. It has been building up its digital offering, capped this year with the acquisition of ad-supported Pluto TV. Viacom is adding 14 new channels to Pluto TV, based on brands like Comedy Central and BET.

By putting its content on new platforms, Viacom will again be able to help marketers reach growing number of young viewers who have cut the cord with traditional TV. With Pluto TV, Viacom expects to grow its number of digital impressions per month to 5 billion by next year.

“We have made incredible strides over the past year due to our acquisitions and expansion to grow our digital reach significantly to the direct benefit of our advertising partners,” Viacom head of ad solutions Sean Moran said. “With more touchpoints than ever before, we look forward to leveraging the full scale and power of Viacom to help our clients create real, authentic connections with our highly coveted and hard-to-reach young audiences wherever they are.”

Evine Live, the shopping channel formerly known as ShopHQ, said it has named retail industry veteran Penny Burnett senior vice president and chief marketing officer.

Burnett, who has more than 20 years of merchandising and retail experience, will begin her new job on April 20. Burnett most recently served as vice president of merchandising for Global Brands Group (a member of the Fung Group) for five years where she directly managed the merchandising strategy for new acquisitions and oversaw merchandising for the Kids’ and Young Men’s businesses. Prior to that, she was the vice president of sales and merchandising for Guggenheim Partners on the Lionel brand and held key merchandising roles at both Macy’s and Target Corp. She will be relocating to Evine’s headquarters in Eden Prairie, Minn.

As part of her employment agreement, Burnett will receive an initial base salary of $345,000 annually and will receive restricted stock and options to purchase shares of Evine’s common stock under its 2011 Omnibus Incentive Plan worth about $155,250. She will also be eligible to participate in the company’s employee benefit programs offered to other senior executives. In addition, when Burnett relocates to the Eden Prairie area, she will be eligible to participate in Evine’s executive relocation program.