We met with Alex Hole, SVP and general manager, Samsung Europe and MENA in Cannes to talk home screen advertising, brand safety, measurement, and why programmatic is the future of CTV...

There are worse places to talk about the future of connected TV than the deck of the Samsung Ads yacht, moored just off the Croisette on one of the hottest afternoons of this year's festival. ExchangeWire's head of content, John Still, sat down with Alex Hole, SVP and general manager, Samsung Europe and MENA, to talk through what's happening behind the screen that 70 million-plus European households turn on every night.

The real estate before the remote even moves

For Hole, the opportunity starts before a viewer has made a single decision about what to watch.

"Put yourself in the eyes of a consumer," he says. "Obviously the first thing you have is a proliferation of apps before you start your content discovery journey. There's no shortage of choices." Samsung Ads' pitch to brands is to plant a flag at the very start of that journey, "almost the moment you turn on your screen."

It's a position that requires care. The home screen carries real weight, Hole argues, but only because the bar for what runs on it has stayed high. The business began with media and entertainment advertisers, with the likes of Apple, Amazon, Channel 4, and ITVX, using the format to showcase their own programming. "We work closely with public service broadcasters, such as Channel 4, to showcase their existing programming and ensure our audiences can easily discover their content," he says, highlighting the scale of the opportunity: 70 million devices across 19 EMEA markets.

What began as an endemic play, content promoting content, has since evolved to include non-endemic brands. "Before viewers decide what to watch, there’s an opportunity to position your brand," Hole explains. "You can capture 100% share of voice on the biggest screen in the household."

It's hard to argue with that framing. Before the 45-minute scroll through Netflix or Amazon even begins, the home screen has already had its moment.

A premium product means a premium guardrail

Samsung's reputation, built on hardware quality, is something Hole is conscious of protecting on the advertising side too.

"Advertising is now fairly ubiquitous, and consumers are far more accepting of it," he says—but that doesn’t mean anything goes. "This is a rich brand environment, so we work closely with partners to ensure the creative bar remains high, with clear guidelines in place to protect quality."

The risk of a poorly placed ad isn’t abstract. As Hole puts it, "A misstep reflects on more than just the advertiser. If an advertiser isn’t positioned well, it reflects badly on the platform as well," he says. That’s why the company works directly with partners to maintain a high creative bar, rather than leaving quality to chance.

Measurement, TotalView, and the "where does this budget sit" problem

Inevitably, the conversation turns to measurement, the perennial CTV headache.

Samsung's position here rests on scale: what Hole describes as the largest TV dataset globally, paired with first-party data from its device base and a layer of third-party signal on top. The company has recently brought that together under TotalView, giving advertisers, in Hole's words, "the holistic view of ad performance across all our screenplay" - tying together app performance and home screen exposure in one picture.

But Hole is candid that the bigger challenge isn't the data itself, it's getting advertisers to agree on what kind of budget the format belongs to. "I think our biggest challenge is how we educate advertisers, and where the buying point sits for a lot of this stuff," he says. "Is it TV? Yes, obviously it is. But it is also programmatic and digital."

Direct deals today, programmatic native by Q3

That ambiguity over budget ownership is mirrored in how Samsung actually transacts. With endemic content brands already living on the launch bar, those relationships tend to run direct. Non-endemic advertisers, by contrast, typically arrive through investment teams and agencies, with Samsung positioning itself as agnostic about the route in. "We’re focused on helping advertisers fully understand the strength of our insights and the power of our data," Hole says. "That requires a deep partnership—once that’s in place, they can see the true value of the platform and how we can support their broader communications strategy."

That's about to change shape. Samsung Ads is preparing to launch programmatic native in Q3, opening up to the major DSPs, a move Hole frames as inevitable rather than incremental. "I fundamentally believe that CTV advertising will be programmatically traded going forward," he says, pointing to the familiar promise of programmatic: reduced operational friction, greater technical control, and easier access to new audiences on the biggest screen in the home. So that’s the future? "I think so," he says. Samsung TV Plus is "almost exclusively" run programmatically already, with very few managed deals remaining. Hole expects that to become the default elsewhere too. "I believe the Home Screen will soon be a standard format—an essential part of any CTV buy. It will be traded programmatically alongside streaming, because it’s a central part of the CTV viewing experience; it’s the first thing you see when you turn on your TV." 

Why Hole bet on the screen

There's a clear thread running through the conversation: Hole sees Samsung's position, owning both the screen and the data that runs across it, as a structural advantage in an industry being reshaped by app proliferation.

"It’s one of the reasons I joined Samsung," he tells me. "I could see the TV industry was heading for major disruption, driven by the explosion of apps—especially streaming. Samsung sits at the intersection of hardware, data, and advertising, which gives us a uniquely strong position in the market."

It's a neat summary of where Samsung sees its edge: not necessarily in winning the 45-minute battle for attention once the remote starts moving, but in owning the moment just before it.