MGS 2026 Recap: How Samsung Turns CTV Ads from Watching to Buying
Are you still treating CTV ads as a line item for brand awareness only? If so, you may be missing a new conversion path where someone sees an ad on the TV and buys right away.
CTV (Connected TV) advertising is advertising delivered to internet-connected TVs. It combines the immersion of television with the measurability of digital media. The daglo marketing team attended MGS 2026, and this post recaps "CTV Ads Next Wave: From Watching to Buying," a session by Wonjong Kim of Samsung Electronics. We transcribed the session with daglo and went back through the transcript to check every figure and example.
Modern Growth Stack (MGS) 2026 is a growth marketing conference hosted by AB180, the company behind Airbridge. It ran July 21 to 24, 2026, at the Westin Seoul Parnas under the theme "Stack AI, Rewrite Everything." See the official MGS 2026 site.
What is CTV advertising, and how big is Samsung's reach?
The first advantage of CTV advertising is reach. Samsung has been the world's No. 1 TV maker for 20 straight years, and of the 830 million TVs it has sold, 250 million are connected to the internet and still serve as ad inventory today.
The speaker spent most of his 23 years at Samsung on the advertiser side, asking how awareness turns into measurable sales. This time he answered from the platform side.
- Units sold: 830 million TVs over 20 years, enough to circle the Earth 24 times if lined up end to end.
- Investment in viewing: Samsung launched the world's first smart TV in 2011 and has since added Tizen OS, Samsung TV Plus, and Gaming Hub.
What keeps viewers in front of the TV: streaming and FAST
After reach comes retention, and retention depends on content. The speaker pointed to streaming and FAST (free ad-supported streaming TV) as the center of that shift.
In the US, streaming already accounts for more than half of viewing time, and cord-cutting keeps spreading. FAST appeals to viewers for three reasons.
- Cost: Watch premium content for free in exchange for ads.
- Access: No sign-up and nothing to cancel.
- Timeliness: Live news, concerts, and sports, not just on-demand video.
Samsung TV Plus runs in about 30 countries with more than 4,400 channels and roughly 100 million monthly active users. It ranks in the global top five among streaming services and No. 1 or 2 among FAST services. In Korea it is adding K-pop content with SM Entertainment, multicam broadcasts where viewers pick from four or more angles, and live polls run from the remote.
Samsung CTV ad placements and cross-device targeting
Samsung TV ads combine the immersion of traditional TV with the interaction tracking of digital media. There are three placements, and in 2026 Samsung launched a product that targets TV ads using Galaxy phone app behavior.
| Placement | How it works | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Home screen ads | The first screen every viewer passes when the TV turns on | Building awareness |
| Mid-roll ads | Shown mid-content based on viewing context and on-screen analysis | Media mix: reach people who missed the broadcast spot, or repeat for those who saw it |
| Gaming Hub ads | Inventory inside the TV gaming service | Reaching gamers |
Cross-device targeting analyzes app usage on Galaxy phones and applies it to Samsung TV ads. A heavy user of a new food app, for example, can see a food ad on TV. The speaker framed the difference as device-based: other platforms can only target and serve ads inside their own service, while Samsung only needs the device.
The next wave of CTV ads: Shoppable Ads you buy with the remote
Shoppable Ads let a viewer order or add to cart with a single press of the remote while the ad is on screen. In Samsung's Korean pilot, 1.3% of people who saw the ad went on to buy.
The speaker described a scene. A soccer-loving family is waiting for tonight's match, and someone in the house often uses a delivery app on a Galaxy phone. An hour before kickoff, a fried chicken ad appears on the TV, and they order with one click of the remote. The enabling technology is ACR (Automatic Content Recognition), which reads what is on screen to understand what viewers like and why. Samsung combines ACR data with commerce data for targeting.
| Amazon pilot (US) | Samsung.com pilot (Korea) | |
|---|---|---|
| How accounts connect | Viewers opt in to link their Samsung and Amazon accounts | Samsung.com, TVs, and phones share one Samsung account |
| What the remote does | Add to cart | Confirm purchase, claim a coupon, add to cart |
| Status at the time of the talk | About 10 companies piloting, full launch planned for late July | Promotions served to people due to replace a TV or phone |
| Result | Conversions well above expectations | 1.3% conversion from impression to purchase |
Bookings and consultation requests work too. For viewers, it means skipping search and comparison and going straight to action.
Takeaways for marketers
The core message: CTV is moving from an awareness channel to a conversion channel. And whatever the channel, cutting the steps between seeing and acting is what drives results.
- Revisit the role of your CTV budget: A 1.3% impression-to-purchase rate is a reason to question treating CTV as branding spend only.
- Combine touchpoint data: Just as Samsung merges TV viewing context with mobile app behavior, check whether the different touchpoint data your brand holds can work together.
- Find reach outside walled gardens: Device-based targeting gets around the limit of only targeting inside one platform.
- Remove steps from your conversion path: Look for search, comparison, or checkout steps you could cut.
When you revisit a talk recording, knowing who said what matters. daglo's Speaker ID remembers voices and fills in real names instead of "Speaker 1" from the next recording on, so you can find a remark even when Q&A is mixed in. daglo is the first service in Korea to offer this to every user. Learn more about Speaker ID
For the rest of the sessions we attended, read our full MGS 2026 recap.
#MGS2026 #ModernGrowthStack #CTVAdvertising #SamsungTVPlus #FAST #ShoppableAds #CrossDeviceTargeting #daglo
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