Nexxen today announced that H/L, a multiservice independent agency, has become the first organisation to programmatically activate native smart TV home screen inventory through Nexxen DSP, using private marketplace(PMP) deals. The announcement, made on April 22, 2026, marks a structural shift in how CTV inventory adjacent to the content discovery moment can be transacted at scale.

The product at the centre of this deal is Nexxen TV Home Screen, a new solution within Nexxen's unified advertising technology stack. It is the first time this class of inventory - the home screen that appears when a viewer turns on their smart TV and before any content selection has been made - has been made available programmatically through a demand-side platform via PMP deal structures.

What Nexxen TV Home Screen actually is

The home screen of a smart TV is not a streaming environment in the traditional sense. It sits upstream of content - the interface that greets a viewer when the device powers on, where apps, recommendations and featured tiles are displayed. According to the announcement, Nielsen estimates that viewers spend an average of 10.5 minutes on this screen before they decide what to watch. That pre-content window is what Nexxen TV Home Screen is designed to monetise.

The inventory is described as native - meaning the ad units are formatted to appear consistent with the surrounding interface, rather than as pre-roll or interstitial video. Nexxen's platform connects this supply through its own supply-side platform (SSP) to buyers on Nexxen DSP, enabling PMP deals where price and placement conditions are negotiated in advance but execution remains automated. The Nexxen Data Platform sits at the core of the stack, providing the audience intelligence layer that connects home screen exposure to downstream performance signals.

This architecture reflects a broader ambition Nexxen has been building toward. The company operates a fully integrated stack - DSP, SSP and data platform in a single system - which allows it to link exposure at one point in the funnel to outcomes at another. The home screen placement, positioned before ad pods in streaming content, is intended to function as a priming layer.

The H/L activation and what preceded it

H/L's decision to activate Nexxen TV Home Screen did not emerge in isolation. The agency has an established track record with Nexxen DSP. Prior to this activation, H/L achieved up to 14x conversion outcomes for clients through Nexxen DSP, a result documented in February 2026 across automotive and insurance verticals. Those results came from signal-backed targeting strategies combining premium inventory with cost-efficient long-tail placements in streaming environments.

The rationale H/L is applying to home screen inventory extends that logic. According to Jeremy Cobb, VP of Digital Platforms at H/L, "CTV is not traditional television, and relying on it to behave the same way is why campaigns can underperform. Consumer behavior has changed, making it critical to maximize the moments when you actually have the audience's attention. Inventory like Nexxen TV Home Screen puts brands in front of engaged viewers, helping capture and build on that attention from the very start." Cobb added: "The reality is viewers are often scrolling, searching or gaming during ad breaks. Creating more focused exposure earlier in the viewing journey helps ensure that when pod spots run, the message actually lands."

The underlying premise is sequential messaging. H/L is using home screen placements to deliver brand exposure at a moment of active engagement - when viewers are attentive and deciding what to watch - so that later :30 or :15 spots within ad pods carry additional weight. The theory of attention priming is not novel, but applying it through a fully programmatic workflow at the home screen layer is new.

The attention fragmentation context

The announcement arrives against a backdrop of intensifying concern about attention in streaming environments. According to eMarketer data cited in the press release, over 80% of U.S. adults now use a phone or computer while watching TV. That figure has significant implications for how ad pods perform. If a viewer's attention has migrated to a second screen before the ad break begins, conventional CTV spots may not land regardless of their creative quality.

This fragmentation problem has driven considerable industry investment. Smart TV home screens saw 60% year-over-year growth in advertiser usage on LG Ad Solutions' network as of November 2025, with research showing that 71% of people who see a home screen ad express willingness to learn more about the advertised brand. Research from Teads, cited on PPC Land, found that CTV home screen ads achieved 48% attention rates, outpacing YouTube skippable pre-roll by 16 percentage points. Unaided recall for home screen placements reached 50% in that study, with aided recall at 84%.

A December 2025 LG Ad Solutions study found that 96% of moviegoers noticed promotions on their TV home screens, while one documented campaign achieved 84,000 theater visits and a 3.5x return on ad spend from home screen placements alone. These are not niche results confined to a single format or platform. The attention dynamics that make the home screen attractive to H/L appear consistently across multiple independent research programmes.

The question, until now, was whether this inventory could be transacted programmatically at scale. Direct buying from OEM platforms has been available, but the workflow sits outside conventional DSP infrastructure - requiring separate negotiations, different creative specifications and disconnected reporting. Nexxen TV Home Screen addresses that gap by integrating the inventory type into the same PMP deal workflow that buyers already use for premium CTV supply.

Nexxen's infrastructure trajectory

Nexxen's ability to offer this product is the result of several years of investment in its CTV supply relationships. The company secured exclusive global ACR data access from VIDAA - the smart TV operating system formerly powering Hisense and Toshiba televisions - through an expanded $35 million investment in August 2025, bringing its total investment in the operating system to $60 million, with rights extending through at least 2029. VIDAA rebranded to V in early 2026.

That investment gave Nexxen both data rights and programmatic access to native smart TV inventory across the OEM's device network - the technical foundation that Nexxen TV Home Screen now surfaces to buyers through Nexxen DSP. In February 2026, Nexxen also joined The Trade Desk's Ventura Ecosystem alongside V, which added OpenPath, Unified ID 2.0, OpenAds and OpenPass connectivity to its supply-side position. That collaboration is designed to let CTV supply operate outside walled-garden platforms.

On the buy side, Nexxen has been expanding its DSP capabilities in parallel. In March 2026, the company announced a full-funnel AI performance suite combining in-flight optimisation, ghost bidding incrementality and nexAI algorithms, designed to connect CTV exposure at the top of the funnel to measurable conversions downstream. On April 6, 2026, Nexxen launched a redesigned AI-native DSP interface with an expanded nexAI DSP Assistant covering pre-campaign quality assurance, deal diagnostics and mid-flight optimisation.

Nexxen is listed on Nasdaq under the ticker NEXN and is headquartered in Israel, with offices across North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific. Its most recent Annual Report on Form 20-F, filed with the SEC on March 4, 2026, reported full-year 2025 programmatic revenue of $340.6 million and cash of $133.3 million.

What the PMP deal structure means in practice

The use of PMP deals rather than open auction or programmatic guaranteed is meaningful. A private marketplace deal gives the buyer - in this case H/L - access to a curated pool of inventory at negotiated price floors, while the seller retains some control over who can access the supply. For a new inventory type like home screen placements, this structure reduces uncertainty on both sides. Buyers know what they are getting; sellers can manage which advertisers activate against a format that is still establishing its measurement and creative norms.

The execution runs entirely through Nexxen DSP, meaning the campaign setup, targeting, pacing and reporting sit within the same system H/L uses for its other CTV and programmatic activity. There is no separate platform login, no manual reconciliation of delivery data from a publisher portal. This operational integration is what distinguishes the Nexxen TV Home Screen product from direct OEM deals that agencies have been able to negotiate bilaterally.

Kara Puccinelli, Chief Customer Officer at Nexxen, framed the strategic value of the unified platform in the announcement: "As consumers continue to divide their time and attention across screens, brands need ways to connect with them during moments when the TV has their full focus, and Nexxen TV Home Screen creates that opportunity. By activating this high-impact media in Nexxen's unified platform, advertisers can not only engage those audiences but also link that exposure to performance across the funnel."

That last clause - linking exposure to performance across the funnel - points to where the measurement question becomes interesting. Home screen placements occur before content selection, which means they precede the streaming session in which later ad pods run. The Nexxen Data Platform's ability to connect these two exposure events within a single reporting environment is what makes the sequential priming strategy measurable rather than theoretical.

Industry context: home screen as a battleground

Nexxen is not the only platform investing in this inventory layer. Teads secured a partnership with Google TV for Masthead placements in early 2026, reaching 500 million-plus devices globally and pairing 3D creative formats with home screen placements across the United States and United Kingdom. Magnite deployed the first AI-generated home screen advertisements in December 2025 across LG Ad Solutions and TCL platforms, using its streamr.ai technology to lower creative production barriers for organisations without large production budgets.

What distinguishes the Nexxen approach is the focus on PMP execution within an integrated DSP-SSP stack, rather than direct publisher deals or standalone creative tools. According to PPC Land's coverage of the IAB Europe Guide to Programmatic for CTV, published in April 2026, programmatic transactions accounted for 75% of CTV spend globally by 2024, and native ad formats were formally documented as one of six CTV ad format categories in that framework. The IAB Europe guide noted that over one-third of CTV impressions are still being delivered in TV-off environments - an estimated $1 billion in annual wasted spend. Home screen placements, by targeting the moment the TV is actively in use and a viewer is present, directly address part of that waste problem.

Ad-supported streaming now reaches 210 million U.S. viewers, according to a VAB report published in April 2026, with 95% of U.S. CTVs displaying advertising on the home screen when the TV is turned on. That figure, sourced from ESHAP Media's January 2026 "War and Peace: The 2026 Agenda," underscores how far home screen advertising has moved from a niche placement to a standard feature of the smart TV experience.

What this means for media buyers

For agencies and media buyers, the Nexxen-H/L announcement is primarily significant because it demonstrates a workflow rather than a concept. H/L has transacted this inventory through PMP deals in Nexxen DSP. The inventory type is real, the deal structure is the same infrastructure buyers already use for premium streaming supply, and there is a prior performance record - up to 14x conversion outcomes - that establishes H/L's credibility in applying Nexxen DSP to CTV challenges.

The open question is whether the measurement framework for home screen placements - connecting pre-content brand exposure to downstream ad pod performance - can be standardised quickly enough to satisfy performance-focused advertisers. The creative requirements differ from standard pre-roll or mid-roll spots. Home screen placements require native formats suited to an interface that has no audio playing and where the viewer's attention is divided between content options rather than locked to a single stream.

These are solvable problems, but they require investment in creative testing and measurement frameworks that most agencies have not yet developed specifically for this inventory type. H/L's status as the first programmatic activator gives it a period in which its learnings will not be replicated at scale by competitors.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Nexxen (Nasdaq: NEXN), an advertising technology platform headquartered in Israel, and H/L, a multiservice independent agency. Kara Puccinelli, Chief Customer Officer at Nexxen, and Jeremy Cobb, VP of Digital Platforms at H/L, provided statements. The announcement was made in New York.

What: H/L became the first agency to programmatically activate native smart TV home screen inventory through Nexxen TV Home Screen, transacting via PMP deals within Nexxen DSP. The approach places brand messaging at the moment viewers are deciding what to watch - a window Nielsen estimates at an average of 10.5 minutes - to prime attention before later :30 and :15 ad pod spots play.

When: The announcement was made on April 22, 2026. The prior H/L and Nexxen collaboration, in which H/L achieved up to 14x conversion outcomes through Nexxen DSP, was announced in February 2026.

Where: The inventory is native smart TV home screen supply accessed programmatically through Nexxen DSP via PMP deals. Nexxen operates its full stack - DSP, SSP and data platform - from its global infrastructure, with the company headquartered in Israel and offices across North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific.

Why: Second-screen behaviour - more than 80% of U.S. adults use a phone or computer while watching TV, according to eMarketer - has reduced the reliability of standard CTV ad pod performance. Home screen placements target the pre-content window when viewer attention is on the television screen, offering a priming exposure before pod spots run. The programmatic PMP structure integrates this inventory into existing DSP workflows, removing the operational barriers that previously limited home screen buying to direct OEM deals.

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