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Last week, U.S. retail leader Walmart confirmed its plans to acquire TV maker Vizio, a move that will help boost Walmart’s advertising business.

When Wal-Mart announced its impressive financial results, it also announced that it would acquire Vizio for US$11.50 per share in cash, with a total transaction value of approximately US$2.3 billion. Walmart has been a major seller of Vizio TVs, and the acquisition will be subject to regulatory scrutiny. After the news was made public, Vizio's stock price closed at $11.08 on the same day, a surge of more than 16%.

Vizio was founded in the United States in 2002 by Wang Wei, Laynie Newsome, and Ken Lowe. It used aggressive pricing strategies to promote high-definition TVs and became the number one brand in the U.S. TV market five years later. In 2005, Ruixuan Technology switched to investing in Vizion. In 2017, LeTV, which originally planned to acquire Vizio, finally gave up the deal due to financial problems. In 2018, Vizio received shares from Hon Hai and Innolux, with an investment amount of more than NT$2 billion. It will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2021.

Through the Vizio Platform Plus business, Vizio has more than 500 advertiser partners, and this business creates high gross profits for the company. In addition, Vizio's SmartCast smart TV system allows users to subscribe to streaming platforms such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Apple TV+, and helps advertisers reach customers. More than 18 million active accounts are in use, growing since 2018 About 4 times.

Although Walmart owns its own TV brand Onn., acquiring Vizio will help it compete with affordable smart TVs from Amazon, Roku and others. Walmart partnered with video advertising platform Innovid last year to place personalized ads on TVs, and previously partnered with Roku to launch shoppable ads to allow customers to purchase Walmart products directly from the TV.