Welcome to the Performance TV Era
5 key takeaways from Samsung Ads Canada’s 2026 Innovation Day
For more than two decades, Samsung has been the world's #1 TV manufacturer. That standing wasn't built on a single product or a single moment — it was built on a commitment to staying ahead of where the industry was heading. When Samsung Ads launched in Canada in 2019, it arrived with something no other partner could offer: unprecedented scale, first-party data and reach that nobody in this market could match. That foundation still stands today. At Samsung Ads Innovation Day in Toronto, the Canadian leadership team presented the company's full-funnel toolkit. Advertisers can now find the right audiences, reach them without waste and prove that it worked — all on the largest first-party TV data set in Canada.
To help advertisers navigate this Performance TV era, here are five actionable takeaways to integrate into your next media plan.
1. Moving from habitual decisions to evidence-based planning
The question Canadian advertisers are asking themselves is, how can I prove that my ad worked?
Dave Pauk, Country Manager for Samsung Ads Canada, highlighted how that performance is built on a foundation of verified, localized scale. Samsung’s 40% market share means it is the primary screen in nearly half of all Smart TV households in Canada and reaches 17 million Canadians across 7 million devices. This significant footprint allows for person-level precision rather than modeled inferences.
Pauk also introduced Vision AI Companion, Samsung's new intelligence layer built into the 2026 TV lineup. "In a market full of black-box solutions, we're offering transparency, accountability and access to meaningful signals," said Pauk. "You see what you're getting, and we can prove it's working." By publishing first-party numbers for Canada specifically rather than global estimates, Samsung is challenging the industry to move away from the status quo and toward evidence-based planning.
2. Reach audiences where they are
The Canadian TV landscape has never been more fragmented — and the conventional wisdom about where audiences are headed is more complicated than it appears.
Corey Johnston, Enterprise Lead at Samsung Ads Canada, presented data showing that Connected TVs now account for 80% of Canadian TV households – and 8 in 10 of those are Smart TVs. One-third of SVOD subscribers hold four or more subscriptions, yet churn has never been higher, with one in three Canadian streamers having cancelled a paid service in the last six months. And despite industry assumptions about ad-tier migration, ad-tier growth has been virtually flat in the past year.
The opportunity, Johnston noted, lies in FAST. Free ad-supported streaming TV has doubled in the past year in Canada, with almost half of all Canadian viewers watching FAST monthly. Samsung TV Plus — the #1 ad-supported platform on Samsung TVs — has grown five times over the past five years in Canada, with loyal viewers active ten or more months per year.
3. Holding TV to the "search and social" standard
The performance potential of CTV was never in question — it was a matter of building the measurement infrastructure to prove it. That infrastructure now exists. Through machine learning and deterministic measurement, Samsung has turned a high-impact TV impression into a direct line to digital action.
Samsung Sales Manager Steph Moraes moderated a panel of performance leaders from Kinesso, Bayer Consumer Health and Rogers Sports & Media, who confirmed that CTV is now being held to the same rigorous standards as search and social. By utilizing Samsung's Web Conversion solutions, brands are tying TV exposure to real-world outcomes like site visits, form fills and verified purchases.
"CTV can now be held to the same standard as search and social, but on the biggest and most immersive screen in the home," says Moraes. Samsung's interactive Creative Canvas formats — including QR codes, vertical video and click-to-email — give advertisers direct-response capabilities built and deployed entirely within the Samsung ecosystem, without reliance on third parties. The TV has moved from a passive to a participation screen that invites the viewer to not just watch but engage with it.
4. The Samsung ecosystem: where reach becomes impact
Scale creates the opportunity. The Samsung ecosystem turns it into outcomes.
Akta Sharma, Senior Sales Manager at Samsung Ads Canada, presented the re-aggregation case: in today's fragmented market, Samsung is the only partner with visibility across linear, streaming, FAST and gaming — and the only one that can bring those audiences back together into a single strategy.
The data makes the case. According to MTM's Fall 2025 Canadian research, nearly half of all Samsung Smart TV owners — 49% — have not seen a single ad on any ad-supported streaming service. Eighty percent are not subscribers or users of CTV Online. Ninety-one percent are not on TV City. Eighty-four percent are not on Global Online TV. These are audiences invisible to any plan that doesn't start with the Samsung Home Screen.
In a recent campaign, a leading Canadian auto advertiser extended their brand messaging to nearly 620,000 additional TVs that had never been exposed to their ads before. Linear reach plateaued in the first week. Samsung kept finding new viewers across the entire six-week flight. Over 70% of that incremental reach came from the Home Screen — because 67% of the viewers it found were exclusive SVOD subscribers unreachable through traditional ad-supported environments.
"When an advertiser shows up in both places — the Home Screen and CTV — performance doesn't just add up. It multiplies," said Sharma.
That multiplier effect also shows up in engagement. A recent GameBreaks campaign in the Canadian market delivered a 5% engagement rate, compared to less than 1% for the average US campaign. Viewers exposed to GameBreaks alongside CTV showed 81% unaided brand recall and 92% aided recall — proof that when the format is immersive and the audience is invested, your brand doesn't just get seen. It sticks.
5. Maximize incremental reach with privacy-first precision
A full-funnel engine requires a toolkit that eliminates waste while navigating a tightening privacy landscape. Allysa Abad, Senior Data Strategist at Samsung Ads Canada, introduced two new solutions that together address both challenges.
Abad introduced two new solutions now available in the Canadian market:
Optimal Reach: This machine-learning solution maps exactly where an audience has already been reached across both linear and streaming to identify — and serve — missing viewers. Samsung is the only platform in Canada with the ability to see commercial exposure within streaming environments, enabled by its proprietary ACR data expanding into app environments
The proof? In North American campaigns, an auto client reached 39% more incremental viewers by adding Optimal Reach to their campaign strategy. By reallocating a portion of their media spend, Samsung helped this client reach net new audiences with 52% more efficiency.
Data Plus: This Snowflake-powered data clean room allows brands to safely overlap first-party data with Samsung's viewing data. Whether matching website visitors to TV households, overlapping app users to find new customers or identifying high-value prospects, this privacy-first architecture ensures optimization meets the highest Canadian standards — including Quebec-specific regulations.
By bridging the gap between linear and streaming data, brands can eliminate wasted spend and build verified, unique audience growth across the full funnel.
Setting the new standard for TV
Samsung Ads didn't arrive at Performance TV because the market moved in that direction. It built the category from the ground up.
As marketing budgets remain under scrutiny, the brands that win will be those that stop viewing CTV as a passive reach channel and start treating it as the full-funnel engine it has become. CTV has always had the audience. Samsung has always had the proof. Now it's time to put both to work.
