Samsung TV Plus Turns Free Streaming Into a New Hollywood Marketing Platform

Samsung TV Plus, the free ad-supported streaming layer built into Samsung televisions, is being positioned as a novel marketing conduit for Hollywood studios. Leveraging a user base of more than 100 million active viewers across 30 nations, the service has streamed entire seasons of Amazon’s Prime Video series such as The Rings of Power and Fallout, as well as a dedicated Hunger Games channel preceding a cinema release.

These initiatives are structured as advertising purchases rather than traditional licensing deals, with Samsung reporting billions of marketing impressions while withholding precise subscriber-growth figures. Vice president of content and programming Takashi Nakano explains the strategy targets the 99 percent of audiences who have not yet seen a program, using first-party data to measure viewership and engagement. While Samsung can confirm high on-demand view counts, it has not independently verified whether the exposure translates into new subscriptions or ticket sales. The approach reflects a broader industry shift toward controlling the TV interface, echoed by Fox’s acquisition of Roku and Netflix’s own ad-inventory expansion.