Nexxen (Nasdaq: NEXN) on May 13 announced two new partnerships for its Nexxen TV Home Screen product, adding TCL FFALCON and TiVo Ads as supply sources for native smart TV home screen inventory accessible through the Nexxen DSP. The integrations represent the first time either company's home screen inventory has been made available for programmatic activation through the platform, and extend the geographic reach of Nexxen TV Home Screen from its initial VIDAA-powered footprint.

The inventory and its geographic scope

According to the announcement, TCL's native home screen inventory will be programmatically available at scale globally. A geographic distinction applies at the deal-structure level: on TCL Android TV devices, select native placements in the United States and Canada will be exclusively accessible through Nexxen as the programmatic partner. That exclusivity clause narrows the field of DSPs able to transact against this specific class of inventory in those two markets.

TiVo Ads' native home screen inventory operates under a different scope. According to the announcement, it will be programmatically available across North America and the United Kingdom, leveraging what Nexxen describes as TiVo's independent ecosystem spanning TV OEMs and operator environments. The breadth of that ecosystem - covering both device manufacturers and pay-TV operators - gives the TiVo Ads integration a somewhat different reach profile than a single-OEM deal.

Native placements, as used in this context, refer to ad units formatted to match the surrounding smart TV interface rather than appearing as interstitial video or pre-roll. The home screen itself is the interface displayed when a television powers on, before a viewer has selected any content to watch. It is distinct from in-app streaming inventory and from standard pre-roll advertising within streaming services.

Why the home screen matters as an ad surface

The strategic logic behind home screen advertising centers on a specific behavioral pattern. According to Nielsen data cited in the announcement, households may spend up to 10.5 minutes browsing before selecting content - a period during which the home screen interface is the primary visual environment. That pre-content window is precisely where Nexxen TV Home Screen positions its placements.

The relevance of this figure extends beyond the dwell time itself. Home screen browsing precedes any content commitment, meaning a viewer has not yet entered an app's editorial environment where competing ad placements also appear. For buyers trying to reach audiences before content fragmentation takes effect - before the viewer is inside a walled garden like a major streaming service - home screen inventory offers a technically distinct touchpoint.

PPC Land reported in April 2026 that H/L, a multiservice independent agency, became the first organization to programmatically activate native smart TV home screen inventory through Nexxen DSP using private marketplace deals. At the time, Nexxen TV Home Screen was built primarily on inventory from V, the smart TV operating system formerly known as VIDAA. The May 13 announcement with TCL and TiVo Ads represents the first expansion of that supply base to additional OEM and ecosystem partners.

TCL's position in the smart TV market

TCL is a consumer electronics manufacturer operating in more than 160 markets worldwide, producing televisions, audio devices, home appliances, mobile devices, and commercial displays. The company runs the ad-supported TCL tv+ streaming app, which reaches over 24 million viewers and carries content from NFL Channel, CBS Sports, Fox Sports, NBC Sports, FIFA, and Golf Pass. TCL and PubMatic announced a partnership in January 2025 to connect that streaming inventory with programmatic live sports advertising buyers.

The Nexxen deal is different in a technical sense. Where the PubMatic partnership covered in-app streaming inventory - video content within TCL tv+ - the Nexxen TV Home Screen integration addresses the native home screen layer, the pre-content interface. The two deal types target different moments in the viewer journey and are transacted through different technical pathways.

According to Jeremy Straight, Global Vice President of TCL Ads, "Native placements on TCL Smart TVs give brands a high-quality, high-impact way to reach audiences at a key moment in the viewing journey. With Nexxen TV Home Screen, it's now easier to activate that inventory at scale, enabling brands and agencies to discover audiences and secure premium placements with the speed and flexibility today's TV market demands."

Straight's name is familiar in programmatic circles. He held the same VP title at TCL when the PubMatic live sports partnership was announced in January 2025, making him a consistent figure in TCL's ad tech deal-making over that period.

TiVo Ads and its ecosystem structure

TiVo is owned by Xperi Inc. and operates primarily as a platform licensing its user interface and content discovery technology to TV manufacturers and pay-TV operators. That licensing model gives TiVo Ads an inventory footprint that spans multiple OEM hardware brands and operator environments rather than being tied to a single device manufacturer. The implication for buyers is that a single programmatic deal accessing TiVo Ads home screen inventory can potentially span a heterogeneous device base rather than a single brand's install base.

Kargo announced a partnership in July 2025 to bring CTV Video and CTV Glass ad formats across TiVo-powered devices, covering in-content advertising within those environments. The Nexxen partnership announced on May 13 is specifically about the home screen layer rather than in-content formats, adding a distinct inventory type to what programmatic buyers can now access across TiVo-enabled devices.

According to Craig Chinn, SVP Global Advertising Sales at TiVo Ads, "Advertisers are looking for meaningful access to audiences they're not reaching today. The home screen is the moment before everything, where decisions are made. By bringing TiVo Ads' native formats into Nexxen's marketplace, we're making it easier for brands to activate this opportunity at scale and turn moments of attention into measurable outcomes."

The Nexxen TV Home Screen product architecture

Nexxen TV Home Screen functions as a layer within Nexxen's unified advertising technology stack, connecting supply from smart TV operating systems and OEM home screens to buyers operating through Nexxen DSP. Programmatic activation runs through private marketplace deals - structures in which price floors and placement conditions are negotiated in advance, but campaign execution remains automated within the DSP.

The product is accessible to buyers through the same DSP workflow used for other premium CTV supply. There is no separate platform login and no manual reconciliation of delivery data from OEM publisher portals. That operational continuity is significant for agency buyers who otherwise face fragmented tooling when trying to access home screen inventory across multiple device manufacturers.

The underlying infrastructure supporting this product has been built through several years of CTV investment. Nexxen renewed its partnership with VIDAA in August 2025 with an additional $35 million investment, bringing total investment to $60 million and securing exclusive global ACR data access and North American ad monetization rights through at least 2029. That agreement - covering a smart TV operating system powering devices from Hisense and Toshiba - established the programmatic access to native smart TV inventory that Nexxen TV Home Screen now surfaces to buyers. ACR, or automatic content recognition, is technology embedded in smart televisions that identifies what content is being watched by analyzing audio waveforms, enabling audience targeting based on actual viewing behavior without relying on cookies or panels.

In February 2026, Nexxen joined The Trade Desk's Ventura Ecosystem alongside V, adding OpenPath, Unified ID 2.0, OpenAds, and OpenPass connectivity to its supply-side position. That structural alignment was designed to let CTV supply transact outside walled-garden platforms, operating within an open programmatic framework. On March 24, 2026, Nexxen announced a full-funnel AI performance suite combining in-flight optimization, ghost bidding incrementality, and nexAI algorithms to connect CTV exposure to downstream conversions. On April 6, 2026, the company launched a redesigned AI-native DSP interface with an expanded nexAI DSP Assistant covering pre-campaign quality assurance, deal diagnostics, and mid-flight optimization.

According to Kenneth Suh, Chief Strategy Officer at Nexxen, "Whether buyers are looking to deepen their existing CTV investments or capture audiences around major tentpole events, Nexxen TV Home Screen unlocks a powerful new lever with premium native placements that draw attention from the moment the TV turns on. By pairing exclusive access to scaled premium inventory like TCL and TiVo Ads with streamlined programmatic purchasing, we are making it remarkably simple for buyers to capture measurable value across the Smart TV ecosystem."

What the TCL exclusivity clause means in practice

The term exclusive, as applied to TCL Android TV placements in the United States and Canada, has a specific technical meaning in this context. It means buyers on other DSPs cannot programmatically access that class of TCL native home screen inventory in those markets - they would need to transact directly with TCL outside programmatic infrastructure or wait for any future changes to the exclusivity arrangement.

For agencies and brands already active on Nexxen DSP, this creates a practical advantage: access to a supply category that competitors using other demand-side platforms cannot reach through programmatic channels. The exclusivity is limited to TCL Android TV devices and is geographically bounded to the US and Canada. TCL home screen inventory on other operating systems or in other regions does not carry the same restriction.

Context within the smart TV advertising market

Home screen advertising has attracted increasing commercial attention from multiple platforms. Magnite announced in December 2025 the first deployment of AI-generated home screen advertisements across LG Ad Solutions and TCL using its streamr.ai technology, lowering creative production barriers for advertisers entering the format. FreeWheel announced partnerships with eight streaming platforms in June 2025, including TCL Ads, expanding its premium CTV marketplace. Those deals covered streaming video inventory, not native home screen placements.

The competitive landscape for home screen advertising programmatic access is still forming. Direct OEM deals have been available for years, but the workflow sits outside conventional DSP infrastructure - requiring separate negotiations, different creative specifications, and disconnected reporting. Platforms that can aggregate home screen inventory from multiple OEMs into a single programmatic buying environment occupy a structurally different position from those that can only offer the format through manual IO-based purchasing.

IAB Europe's 2026 programmatic day discussions in April identified CTV measurement gaps and fragmented buying workflows as persistent structural issues for the industry, with speakers from Google, Amazon, Publicis, and Magnite noting that no single team within agency holding companies consistently owns CTV budget authority. That fragmentation increases the operational value of platforms that reduce the number of separate systems a buyer needs to manage.

CTV advertising spending is projected to approach $33.35 billion in 2025, with CTV's share of total media budgets having risen from 14% in 2023 to an estimated 28% in 2025, according to data tracked by PPC Land. The shift toward programmatic home screen inventory adds a new category to that market - one that sits upstream of streaming content consumption rather than within it.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Nexxen (Nasdaq: NEXN), TCL FFALCON, and TiVo Ads. Nexxen is an advertising technology company headquartered in Israel with offices across North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific, operating a demand-side platform (DSP) and supply-side platform (SSP). TCL is a global consumer electronics manufacturer. TiVo Ads is the advertising division of Xperi Inc., whose platform licenses technology to TV OEMs and pay-TV operators.

What: Nexxen announced the expansion of Nexxen TV Home Screen with two new OEM and ecosystem partners. TCL FFALCON's native home screen inventory will be available programmatically through Nexxen DSP globally, with U.S. and Canada placements on TCL Android TV devices exclusively accessible through Nexxen. TiVo Ads' native home screen inventory will be available programmatically across North America and the United Kingdom. Both integrations are described as firsts - neither company has previously made this class of inventory available through a DSP.

When: The announcement was made on May 13, 2026, via GlobeNewswire at 07:30 ET.

Where: The programmatic activation operates through Nexxen DSP. TCL's inventory is globally available, with exclusive programmatic access to TCL Android TV placements in the United States and Canada. TiVo Ads' inventory is available across North America and the United Kingdom.

Why: Smart TV home screens attract sustained viewer attention before any content selection, with Nielsen data showing households spending up to 10.5 minutes browsing. By aggregating this inventory from multiple OEM and ecosystem partners into a single DSP-accessible programmatic layer, Nexxen positions buyers to reach audiences at a pre-content touchpoint that has historically required direct, non-programmatic deals with individual device manufacturers.