ShowHeroes and Whale TV this week announced a partnership that opens Whale TV's connected TV homescreen inventory to programmatic buyers for the first time, spanning nine market groupings across Europe and Latin America.

A new buying pathway for the TV power-on moment

According to ShowHeroes, the integration makes Whale TV's homescreen placements available through automated buying across DACH, Benelux, Ireland, the Nordics, France, Italy, Spain, Central and Eastern Europe, and Latin America. The homescreen is the interface a viewer sees the instant a television is switched on, before any app opens or any content begins to play. ShowHeroes describes this as one of the most prominent moments on the TV screen, and the company frames the deal as unlocking that placement for buyers who already operate demand-side platform workflows rather than negotiating direct-sold deals market by market.

Whale TV, the independent smart TV operating system at the center of the deal, has not previously made its homescreen available for programmatic purchase at this breadth. The integration is now live across the participating markets, according to the companies, and is accessible through ShowHeroes' global demand network.

The move places Whale TV alongside a growing list of television operating system providers that have opened homescreen inventory to programmatic demand over the past year. Samsung Ads did so on June 10, 2026, connecting its Smart TV homescreen to The Trade Desk and Google's DV360, powered by Magnite's SpringServe ad server, with a global rollout that began in Q3 2026. Nexxen extended its own Nexxen TV Home Screen product to TCL FFALCON and TiVo Ads on May 13, 2026, building on a VIDAA-powered footprint that started with an agency deal through private marketplace transactions on April 22, 2026. LG Ad Solutions, meanwhile, renewed its exclusivity arrangement with Teads in April 2026, extending homescreen coverage into Italy, Greece, Cyprus and additional Asia-Pacific markets. Each of these moves points to the same underlying commercial logic: the homescreen has become the most contested piece of real estate in connected television, and companies that control it are racing to make it accessible through the buying tools advertisers already use.

What the companies said

Two named executives provided statements in the announcement. Sarah Lewis, Global Vice President of CTV at ShowHeroes, said the partnership addresses a shift in advertiser expectations. "Connected TV is evolving rapidly, and advertisers increasingly expect premium inventory to be as easy to access as it is impactful," Lewis said. "Our partnership with Whale TV makes one of the most valuable placements in the TV experience programmatically available across multiple markets, giving brands a new way to engage audiences from the very first screen they see while maintaining the high standards of quality and brand safety both companies are known for."

Chris Hock, Vice President and Head of Whale TV Ads, framed the deal from the platform's side. "The homescreen is the first interaction viewers have with their television, making it a unique opportunity for brands to connect with audiences," Hock said. "Working with ShowHeroes allows us to make this premium inventory available through programmatic buying while preserving the curated experience our users expect and giving advertisers a more efficient way to activate campaigns across our platform."

The attention research behind the pitch

The announcement cites research attributed to the MediaMento Institute, stating that CTV homescreen ads achieve a 48 percent attention rate, which the release describes as 16 percentage points higher than skippable pre-roll advertising, with unaided recall at 50 percent and aided recall reaching 84 percent.

These figures are notable because they match research that has circulated in the connected television advertising sector since September 25, 2025, when Teads published findings from a study conducted with MediaMento Institute. That earlier study, using in-lab eye-tracking technology and brand recall surveys with 100 Smart TV viewers, found that CTV HomeScreen video ads achieved a 48 percent attention rate, outperforming YouTube skippable pre-roll by 16 percentage points, with unaided recall at 50 percent and aided recall at 84 percent. Teads has referenced the same figures repeatedly across subsequent announcements, including its Google TV partnership disclosed February 5, 2026, its renewed LG Ad Solutions exclusivity announced April 23, 2026, and its CTV Ensemble product launched June 21, 2026. MediaMento Institute conducted the underlying Phase 1 research in June 2025, according to prior coverage.

Whether the MediaMento Institute figures cited in the ShowHeroes and Whale TV release derive from that same study, a related or updated study, or independent research using comparable methodology is not stated in the materials reviewed for this article. The press release does not specify the sample size, measurement methodology, or publication date of the research it cites. For a reader evaluating the claim, the practical takeaway is that a 48 percent attention rate and a 16 percentage point gap versus pre-roll are numbers that have already been in circulation across the CTV homescreen category for close to a year, attached to more than one commercial partnership.

Scale and market context

Whale TV describes itself as an independent TV operating system working with more than 400 TV brands and enabling more than 47 million monthly active TVs worldwide. The platform is headquartered in Singapore, according to the company, with teams collaborating across regions including the United States, Germany, the Netherlands, China, India and Brazil.

ShowHeroes describes itself as a globally independent provider of connected TV and digital video advertising solutions, operating as a co-publisher of online media and combining publisher partnerships, contextual targeting and ad formats aimed at brands operating in cookieless environments. The company's SemanticHero AI platform powers campaigns across screens, according to ShowHeroes.

The Whale TV deal follows a period of expansion for ShowHeroes. In March 2026, the company acquired Traffective, a Munich-based programmatic monetization platform, in a transaction disclosed March 6, 2026. According to the companies involved in that deal, the combined entity reaches close to 2,000 publisher partners and generates more than 25 billion ad impressions monthly, with cross-channel advertising volumes exceeding 10 million euros per month. ShowHeroes has cited that same combined scale, close to 2,000 publisher partners and more than 25 billion monthly ad impressions, in describing its position as one of Europe's largest independent publisher monetization platforms across CTV, video and display.

ShowHeroes and Omnicom Media Netherlands also published pan-European research on March 24, 2026, examining Free Ad-Supported Streaming TV adoption. That study, surveying 4,377 respondents aged 18 to 65 across six markets including the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands, found FAST household adoption at 27 percent across Europe. The research described subscription fatigue as a structural rather than cyclical phenomenon, with Ilhan Zengin, CEO at ShowHeroes Group, stating that the European streaming market had reached economic equilibrium.

Why the homescreen has become contested ground

Homescreen advertising has drawn sustained attention from multiple corners of the connected television industry over the past year. LG Ad Solutions reported on November 18, 2025, that general-market advertisers using its homescreen placements had increased more than 60 percent year over year, with viewers spending close to 10 minutes browsing homescreens before selecting content, according to the company. Separate LG research published December 17, 2025, found that 96 percent of moviegoers notice homescreen promotions and 67 percent go on to rent or purchase a title after seeing one.

The Video Advertising Bureau has documented a broader structural shift in how frequently homescreen advertising appears at all. According to VAB analysis, 95 percent of US connected televisions now display advertising on the homescreen when the set is switched on, up from 50 percent in 2020. That shift explains why operating system providers across the industry, not only Whale TV, have moved in the same direction within a compressed window. Fox's agreement to acquire Roku, announced June 15, 2026, was described in later PPC Land analysis as motivated partly by Roku's homescreen position, since the homescreen is where Roku sells high-CPM display and video inventory that had not previously been available programmatically at scale.

For programmatic buyers and agencies, the practical significance of these announcements lies less in any single deal and more in the accumulation of them. A media buyer running campaigns across Samsung, LG, Nexxen-connected sets, and now Whale TV encounters the same placement type, sold through increasingly similar programmatic mechanics, across an expanding share of the smart TV installed base. Whether that consolidation of buying pathways translates into more competitive pricing, or simply extends the reach of the same handful of demand-side platforms into a new inventory category, is not addressed in the materials reviewed for this article.

Technical and structural details

The ShowHeroes and Whale TV integration covers homescreen inventory specifically, distinct from in-app video or content-adjacent placements elsewhere in the CTV ecosystem. According to the announcement, the deal is accessible through ShowHeroes' global demand network, meaning agencies and advertisers connect to the inventory through ShowHeroes' existing programmatic infrastructure rather than negotiating a separate integration with Whale TV directly.

The nine-market grouping named in the release, DACH, Benelux, Ireland, the Nordics, France, Italy, Spain, Central and Eastern Europe, and Latin America, spans a substantially wider geographic footprint than several comparable homescreen deals disclosed earlier in 2026, most of which concentrated on North America, the UK, or a handful of Western European markets. Neither company specified in the announcement which individual countries within Latin America, CEE, or the Nordics are included at launch, nor did they disclose commercial terms, minimum spend requirements, or a timeline for additional market expansion beyond describing the integration as already live.

Summary

Who: ShowHeroes, a Berlin-based independent provider of connected TV and digital video advertising solutions, and Whale TV, a Singapore-headquartered independent smart TV operating system working with more than 400 TV brands and 47 million monthly active TVs.

What: A global partnership making Whale TV's premium connected TV homescreen inventory available through programmatic buying for the first time, announced through named executives Sarah Lewis of ShowHeroes and Chris Hock of Whale TV.

When: The partnership was announced today, July 28, 2026, with the integration described as already live across participating markets.

Where: The rollout spans DACH, Benelux, Ireland, the Nordics, France, Italy, Spain, Central and Eastern Europe, and Latin America.

Why: The deal reflects a broader industry pattern in which television operating system providers, including Samsung, LG, and Nexxen-connected platforms, have opened homescreen inventory, the highest-attention surface in connected television according to multiple industry studies, to programmatic demand over the past year, aiming to capture advertiser budgets shifting toward automated buying across an expanding share of the smart TV installed base.

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