ShowHeroes and Whale TV this week announced a partnership that opens Whale TV's connected TV homescreen inventory to programmatic buyers for the first time, spanning nine market groupings across Europe and Latin America.
A new buying pathway for the TV power-on moment
According to ShowHeroes, the integration makes Whale TV's homescreen placements available through automated buying across DACH, Benelux, Ireland, the Nordics, France, Italy, Spain, Central and Eastern Europe, and Latin America. The homescreen is the interface a viewer sees the instant a television is switched on, before any app opens or any content begins to play. ShowHeroes describes this as one of the most prominent moments on the TV screen, and the company frames the deal as unlocking that placement for buyers who already operate demand-side platform workflows rather than negotiating direct-sold deals market by market.
Whale TV, the independent smart TV operating system at the center of the deal, has not previously made its homescreen available for programmatic purchase at this breadth. The integration is now live across the participating markets, according to the companies, and is accessible through ShowHeroes' global demand network.
The move places Whale TV alongside a growing list of television operating system providers that have opened homescreen inventory to programmatic demand over the past year. Samsung Ads did so on June 10, 2026, connecting its Smart TV homescreen to The Trade Desk and Google's DV360, powered by Magnite's SpringServe ad server, with a global rollout that began in Q3 2026. Nexxen extended its own Nexxen TV Home Screen product to TCL FFALCON and TiVo Ads on May 13, 2026, building on a VIDAA-powered footprint that started with an agency deal through private marketplace transactions on April 22, 2026. LG Ad Solutions, meanwhile, renewed its exclusivity arrangement with Teads in April 2026, extending homescreen coverage into Italy, Greece, Cyprus and additional…