The news: Samsung Ads launched an Immersive Carousel ad offering to help TV advertisers craft high-intent, engaging campaigns.

• The ad unit lets advertisers on Samsung TV home screens run ads with up to five separate tiles.
• It’s available on over 70 million Samsung Smart TVs in Europe and auto-rotates every five seconds, or manually with the remote control.

“We know the home screen is where viewers’ content discovery journey begins on connected TVs. The home-screen Immersive Carousel delivers the rich storytelling capabilities that advertisers are looking for, while also enabling them to promote multiple products, or multiple aspects of the same product, in a single ad unit,” Alex Hole, SVP and general manager of Samsung Europe and MENA, said, per MarTech Series.

Public broadcast television network ITVx is using the Immersive Carousel to increase engagement with shows and found that consumers who viewed all five tiles spent 40% more time in-app than viewers who weren’t exposed to the ads.

Why it matters: The connected TV (CTV) home screen is prime real estate, and the companies that own smart TV operating systems are gaining more control over ad dollars.

ITVx’s bump in time spent in-app matters because it suggests the TV home screen can influence what viewers choose to watch and purchase. Ads placed before content selection may help shape decisions at the moment of intent—26% of CTV users said TV screen home ads were helpful for finding holiday gift information, per LG Ad Solutions.

Recommendations for marketers: Home screen ads could shift budgets away from traditional in-stream video ads and toward placements that drive measurable app engagement.

• Experiment with home screen placements to test whether ads shown at the point of content selection drive higher downloads, time spent, or search engagement.
• See how home screen performance varies by category—entertainment and gaming may benefit from direct app engagement, while retail brands may see stronger awareness among high-intent viewers.

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