Nexxen International yesterday reported record Q1 2026 financial results, with programmatic revenue reaching $81.9 million and CTV revenue hitting $29.4 million - figures that mark the commercial payoff of a platform strategy built around smart TV home screen inventory, exclusive automatic content recognition data, and AI-assisted campaign tooling. The announcement, released on May 13, 2026, came alongside a separate expansion of Nexxen TV Home Screen to TCL FFALCON and TiVo Ads, adding two significant hardware partners to a product that launched with V (formerly VIDAA) inventory as its foundation.

For media buyers and programmatic practitioners, the quarter offers a concrete look at where a mid-sized independent ad tech stack is allocating investment - and what that means for the inventory and tooling available to agencies building CTV and mobile in-app plans in 2026.

What the numbers mean for buyers

The top-line figures are straightforward. Programmatic revenue grew 14% year-over-year to $81.9 million, up from $71.8 million in Q1 2025. CTV revenue reached $29.4 million, a 12% increase, representing 36% of total programmatic revenue. Contribution ex-TAC - the company's preferred non-IFRS measure of core platform economics, stripping out non-programmatic traffic acquisition costs - was $84.5 million, up 13% from $75.0 million a year earlier.

What is more telling for buyers is the revenue mix. Programmatic now accounts for 94% of Nexxen's total revenue, up from 92% in Q1 2025. The non-programmatic performance business - the legacy segment built on buying impressions at scale on a CPM basis - has been declining steadily and represented just 6% of total revenue in the quarter. That contraction matters because it signals where Nexxen's engineering and commercial resources are concentrated: the DSP, the SSP, and the data infrastructure connecting them.

Mobile in-app revenue grew 18% year-over-year in Q1, with the earnings presentation noting early signs of further acceleration. That growth is being supported by direct SDK integrations with Unity and others, which give Nexxen's supply-side platform access to scaled mobile in-app inventory with improved signal quality. For buyers running cross-channel campaigns that include gaming and app environments, the Unity partnership extends the reach of Nexxen's programmatic stack into supply that is structurally insulated from the kind of AI-driven search displacement affecting browser-based inventory.

Video revenue as a share of programmatic declined from 75% to 65% year-over-year. That 10-percentage-point shift reflects the growing contribution of native formats - specifically home screen placements - and mobile in-app display inventory to the overall mix. It does not reflect a decline in video volume in absolute terms.

The home screen inventory category, explained

The most operationally significant development in Q1 for buyers is the expansion of Nexxen TV Home Screen. According to the earnings release, the product is described as the industry's first programmatic solution for native Smart TV home screen advertising. PPC Land covered the TCL and TiVo expansion in detail on May 13.

What distinguishes home screen inventory from the in-stream CTV placements most buyers are familiar with? The placement sits on the television's main interface - the screen a viewer sees when they power on the device or navigate between apps - rather than inside a streaming application. Practically, this means the ad appears before the viewer has entered a walled garden environment such as Netflix, Disney+, or a broadcaster's app. The impression is non-skippable. There is no content adjacency constraint in the same way there is for pre-roll. And crucially, the audience data used for targeting does not depend on the streaming platform's identity infrastructure.

Before Nexxen TV Home Screen, this inventory was transacted primarily through direct insertion orders between advertisers and device manufacturers. That model limited scale for buyers and monetization efficiency for OEMs. The programmatic layer Nexxen has built - aggregating supply through its SSP and making it accessible to demand from DSPs including The Trade Desk, StackAdapt, Basis, and H/L - introduces auction-based pricing, private marketplace deal structures, and the measurement tooling that programmatic buyers expect.

The supply base expanded materially today. TCL's native home screen inventory is now programmatically accessible globally through Nexxen, with exclusivity on select native placements in the United States and Canada on TCL Android TV devices. TiVo Ads' native home screen inventory in North America and the United Kingdom is also now accessible. TCL operates in more than 160 markets worldwide. Combined with the existing V-powered inventory, the product now spans multiple device ecosystems rather than a single operating system.

H/L became the first agency to activate this inventory programmatically in April 2026, using private marketplace deals inside Nexxen DSP. That case study followed earlier H/L results published in February 2026 showing up to 14x conversion lift from signal-backed CTV targeting using Nexxen's platform, providing concrete performance benchmarks for agencies evaluating the channel.

ACR data: what it is and why it is expanding

The targeting layer underpinning Nexxen's CTV position is ACR data. Automatic content recognition technology is embedded in smart television hardware and identifies what content the screen is displaying by analyzing audio waveforms in real time. It does not rely on cookies, device IDs, or streaming platform login data. The result is a dataset reflecting actual television viewing behavior across both linear broadcast and streaming content, on the same device, updated continuously.

Nexxen's exclusive access to this data comes from its partnership with V, the smart TV operating system formerly known as VIDAA that powers devices from Hisense and Toshiba. That partnership was renewed and expanded in August 2025 with an additional $35 million investment, securing exclusive global ACR data rights and exclusive North American ad monetization rights on V media through at least the end of 2029. According to today's Q1 earnings materials, Nexxen expects to invest a further $15 million in V during Q3 2026, bringing total investment to $60 million, representing approximately 6% of V's outstanding shares.

That data is now distributed across multiple buying platforms. Nexxen made its ACR segments available on The Trade Desk in August 2024, becoming the first self-service TV data provider on that platform in the United Kingdom and Canada. Yahoo DSP gained access in October 2025 across the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany.

During Q1 2026, Nexxen entered a new ACR data licensing deal with Adform, extending access to Germany and the United Kingdom, with France expected to follow later in the year. For buyers already working within Adform's ecosystem in European markets, that integration adds a television viewing signal that previously required a separate platform relationship to access.

The practical application for campaign planning is straightforward. ACR data lets buyers identify audiences who have watched a specific competitor's television advertisement, who are regular viewers of a particular programming category, or who have been exposed to a brand's linear TV flight - and then retarget those viewers programmatically across CTV, mobile, and display. The signal persists across the linear-streaming divide because it is captured at the device hardware level rather than inside any individual app or platform.

Nexxen also launched Nexxen TV during Q1 2026, described as a unified planning and activation solution spanning both linear TV and CTV. The product enables advertisers to discover audiences, activate campaigns, and measure outcomes across the combined television landscape within a single interface, sitting alongside the existing DSP and SSP infrastructure.

What the nexAI DSP changes look like in practice

The Q1 results include several operational metrics from the AI tooling upgrades worth examining. These are self-reported company figures, but the underlying categories - troubleshooting time, quality assurance steps, reporting efficiency - correspond to real cost centers in programmatic campaign management.

The company launched an AI-native DSP user interface during Q1 2026. According to the release, buyers using the redesigned interface reported year-over-year efficiency gains of over 60% in Q1 2026, alongside a more than 80% reduction in the number of steps required to drive campaign performance. Onboarding and training time decreased materially. Enhancements to the nexAI DSP assistant drove over 93% year-over-year improvement in troubleshooting efficiency, over 96% improvement in quality assurance efficiency, and over 97% reduction in time spent on reporting activities.

What those figures describe, practically, is a reduction in the operational overhead of running campaigns on the platform. Fewer manual steps to launch a campaign, faster resolution of delivery issues, and less time spent pulling performance reports each translate to labor cost savings at the agency or trading desk level. PPC Land covered the April 2026 launch of the AI-native interface in detail, noting that Nexxen's model - embedding AI recommendations within human-controlled workflows rather than replacing those workflows with autonomous agents - differs from the approach taken by Yahoo DSP and Amazon, both of which have moved toward more fully autonomous AI buying modes.

The February 2026 Ventura Ecosystem launch added OpenPath, Unified ID 2.0, OpenAds, and OpenPass connectivity to Nexxen's supply-side operations, embedding the platform within The Trade Desk's CTV marketplace framework alongside V. For buyers who run campaigns through The Trade Desk and want access to home screen inventory or V-powered ACR targeting, that integration provides the supply chain transparency infrastructure to do so at scale.

According to the earnings presentation, nexAI is also being expanded within the SSP in 2026 to enhance publisher performance and introduce more autonomous deal solutions for advertisers. The internal AI capabilities are described as driving faster development timelines and operating leverage, with benefits expected to scale into late 2026 and beyond.

Enterprise adoption and what is coming

The company reports onboarding more new enterprise customers in 2026 to date than in the entirety of 2025. Enterprise spend is expected to accelerate in the second half of 2026 through increasing full-stack adoption - using both the DSP and SSP together - and growing wallet share within existing clients.

CEO Ofer Druker cited Tinuiti specifically as a performance-focused agency where "nexAI-powered DSP enhancements and ongoing innovation are driving improved outcomes and efficiency." Direct SDK partnerships with Unity and other mobile platforms are described as supporting mobile in-app revenue growth and improving signal quality across both sides of the platform.

Guidance for full-year 2026 was raised on two of three metrics. Contribution ex-TAC guidance increased to $382 million to $397 million, from the prior range of $375 million to $390 million, representing approximately 10% year-over-year growth at the midpoint. Programmatic revenue guidance moved to $374 million to $388 million, from $367 million to $381 million, implying approximately 12% year-over-year growth. Adjusted EBITDA guidance was unchanged at $122 million to $132 million, representing approximately 10% year-over-year growth and a 33% margin on a Contribution ex-TAC basis at the midpoint.

The profitability picture is more complex than the revenue growth suggests. Adjusted EBITDA fell 30% year-over-year to $16.3 million in Q1, with the margin contracting from 31% to 19% on a Contribution ex-TAC basis. Selling and marketing expenses rose to $34.3 million from $28.9 million; R and D costs climbed to $15.1 million from $12.8 million; general and administrative expenses increased to $9.6 million from $6.8 million. Under IFRS, the company reported a net loss of $5.3 million compared with net income of $1.6 million in Q1 2025. That compression reflects accelerated investment across all three operating cost categories simultaneously. The company is maintaining its full-year EBITDA guidance unchanged, indicating the cost structure is expected to stabilize relative to revenue as the year progresses.

Cash stood at $94.6 million as of March 31, 2026, with no long-term debt and $50 million available under an undrawn revolving credit facility. The company repurchased 1,133,298 shares during the quarter at an average price of $6.29, completing its $20 million buyback program and receiving authorization for a new $40 million program.

An investor day is scheduled for June 16, 2026.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Nexxen International Ltd. (Nasdaq: NEXN), an advertising technology company headquartered in Israel, operating a demand-side platform, supply-side platform, and data platform with offices across North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific.

What: The company today reported record Q1 2026 financial results including programmatic revenue of $81.9 million (+14% year-over-year), CTV revenue of $29.4 million (+12%), and Contribution ex-TAC of $84.5 million (+13%). Full-year 2026 Contribution ex-TAC guidance was raised to $382-$397 million and programmatic revenue guidance to $374-$388 million. Nexxen TV Home Screen expanded to TCL FFALCON and TiVo Ads, a new ACR data deal was signed with Adform covering Germany and the United Kingdom, and Nexxen TV launched as a unified linear and CTV planning solution.

When: Financial results announced May 13, 2026, covering the three months ended March 31, 2026. The Nexxen TV Home Screen expansion to TCL and TiVo was announced on the same date.

Where: Earnings release issued from New York. Principal executive office at 82 Yigal Alon Street, Tel Aviv, Israel. Form 6-K filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on May 13, 2026, signed by CFO Sagi Niri.

Why: The results reflect the commercial output of a multi-year investment in CTV home screen inventory, exclusive ACR data from V-powered devices, and AI tooling within the DSP and SSP. Programmatic now represents 94% of total revenue, mobile in-app grew 18% year-over-year, and the guidance raise signals Q2 2026 is tracking above initial expectations across CTV, mobile, and data products.

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