Teads made the inventory of Whale TV, an independent television operating system, available to advertisers worldwide through its buying platform on September 10, 2026, widening a supply relationship that began in Europe two years earlier.

In Short

Teads is a company that helps brands buy ads, and Whale TV runs the software inside certain smart televisions. The two firms already worked together in Europe, and now they have opened that arrangement to more than 100 countries, so advertisers can buy ads on Whale TV screens through a single tool. For media buyers, it means one more source of the high-visibility "home screen" ad slot that shows up when a viewer switches on the TV, reachable without a separate contract for each region.

What the agreement covers

The deal extends a European collaboration launched in 2024 into a broader global partnership, according to Teads, pushing advertiser access past 100 countries. Whale TV works with more than 400 television brand partners as an operating system, and that reach adds to Teads' footprint in established markets as well as faster-growing regions across Asia-Pacific, Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa.

The inventory in question sits on the television home screen. Advertisers can buy Whale TV's HomeScreen masthead and native display placements, including formats that expand into full-screen video when a viewer interacts with the ad. The company said it will also continue to sell Whale TV's CTV InStream inventory globally under the existing relationship between the two firms, a separate stream of supply that runs during content rather than on the landing interface.

Whale TV inventory is live in Teads Ad Manager worldwide as of the announcement, according to the company. Within that platform, buyers can run Whale TV placements alongside campaigns on connected television, web, and mobile, and apply Teads' audience data, creative tools, predictive AI, and measurement inside the same workflow.

The numbers behind the footprint

Teads described the expansion as part of continued investment in connected television. Over the preceding year, the company added or expanded inventory partnerships with Google TV, LG Ad Solutions, V (formerly VIDAA), and TiVo. Teads states that it provides advertisers with direct access to more than 500 million addressable TV devices globally for HomeScreen advertising, a figure that reflects the combined reach of all those manufacturer relationships rather than Whale TV alone.

Whale TV's own scale is smaller and more specific. The operating system has worked with more than 400 TV brands since its founding in 2011, and it enables over 47.5 million monthly active TVs around the world, according to the company. Whale TV is headquartered in Singapore.

Adoption of the home screen format itself carries its own count. Teads reported more than 6,000 HomeScreen campaigns delivered since 2023, which the company frames as evidence of advertiser uptake across markets and categories. That tally has climbed through the year: PPC Land reported that Teads cited more than 5,000 such campaigns in June 2026, up from 4,000 in February and roughly 3,500 at the close of 2025.

Statements from the companies

Teads attributed the strategic logic to Simon Klein, its Global SVP Commercial Strategy CTV. "Advertisers are looking for global CTV scale without the complexity of managing separate platforms and regional workflows," Klein said, adding that the wider Whale TV relationship "gives brands greater access to high-impact HomeScreen inventory while strengthening the global supply foundation behind our omnichannel CTV offering."

Chris Hock, VP and Head of Whale TV Ads, framed the change as a shift in scope. "Our partnership with Teads has grown from a strong regional collaboration into a global opportunity for advertisers," Hock said. Making the inventory available worldwide through Teads Ad Manager, he added, helps brands "access high-impact TV environments more easily and connect those experiences with broader cross-screen campaigns."

Where this sits in Teads' CTV build-out

The Whale TV expansion is the latest in a run of supply and measurement deals that Teads has assembled since 2023, most of them centred on the same home screen placement.

In February 2026, Teads secured access to Google TV's Masthead placement, the first visual impression shown when a viewer turns on or returns to a Google TV device, across markets including the United States and United Kingdom. That announcement was where the 500 million device figure and the 4,000-campaign milestone first appeared together.

The manufacturer relationships have widened in the months since. In April 2026, LG Ad Solutions and Teads renewed their exclusive HomeScreen arrangement in Europe and Asia-Pacific, adding Italy, Greece, Cyprus, and several Asian markets to a deal that by then spanned more than two dozen countries. In August 2026, Teads took exclusive global rights to a 10-day Black Friday and Cyber Monday takeover of the home screen on V, the operating system formerly called VIDAA, under a multi-year agreement running through 2028 that introduced targeting by physical screen size and by the room a television occupies.

Measurement has advanced alongside supply. In May 2026, Teads extended its partnership with Lumen Research to bring predictive eye-tracking models to the HomeScreen placement, taking exclusive access to Lumen's CTV attention measurement for that slot across the United States, EMEA, APAC, and LATAM. The company had earlier moved on outcome tracking: in October 2025, Teads launched CTV Performance in beta, a deterministic measurement product that ties CTV exposure to site visits, leads, and sales, which the company said brought that form of attribution outside the United States for the first time.

Those threads were pulled into a named product in mid-2026. On June 18, 2026, Teads launched CTV Ensemble, a suite combining HomeScreen and InStream inventory, dynamic creative optimization, agentic targeting, and a performance measurement layer inside one workflow. Teads said at the time that it had validated mid- to lower-funnel outcomes over nearly 40 beta campaigns across 14 countries. The Whale TV expansion feeds that suite: the company positioned the added supply as a contribution to CTV Ensemble's HomeScreen and InStream solutions.

The build-out has not been without financial strain. In its second-quarter 2026 results, Teads halted its full-year guidanceafter direct-response profit fell 30 percent, even as the company reported continued expansion of its HomeScreen supply and reiterated the 500 million screen figure.

Why it matters

Home screen inventory has become one of the most contested placements in connected television, because it captures a viewer's attention before any content is chosen. The commercial question for buyers has been fragmentation: each television manufacturer has historically set its own ad specifications and sold its own inventory, forcing separate integrations and workflows for every device maker.

That friction has drawn responses across the sector. Nexxen standardized its home screen ad specifications across the manufacturers supplying its platform in August 2026, replacing varied ad sizes and formats with a single request structure, and it holds a competing set of rights on the V operating system where Teads secured its Black Friday takeover. The Teads approach differs in mechanism but shares the aim: consolidate scattered manufacturer supply behind one point of access so that a programmatic campaign can reach the placement across borders without bespoke deals in each territory.

The Whale TV agreement is incremental rather than structural. It adds one more operating system, weighted toward emerging markets, to a footprint Teads has been enlarging manufacturer by manufacturer. For media buyers, the practical effect is a wider set of home screen supply reachable through a single platform, in regions where connected television penetration is still climbing. Whether that supply commands the demand Teads projects will depend on the same adoption curve the company has been tracking in its campaign counts, and on how the placement performs against the measurement standards the company has spent the year assembling.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Teads (Nasdaq: TEAD), the omnichannel advertising platform, and Whale TV, an independent Singapore-based television operating system, with statements attributed to Teads' Simon Klein and Whale TV's Chris Hock.

What: Teads made Whale TV's HomeScreen masthead, native display, and CTV InStream inventory available to advertisers globally through Teads Ad Manager, extending a partnership that started in Europe in 2024.

When: September 10, 2026, with the inventory described as live worldwide as of the announcement.

Where: More than 100 countries, spanning established markets and growth regions across Asia-Pacific, Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa.

Why: Advertisers want to reach the high-attention home screen placement at global scale without negotiating and integrating separately with each television manufacturer; the deal adds one more operating system, weighted toward emerging markets, to a footprint Teads has been enlarging across the year.