Shoppable Content Meets Cloud Gaming on CTV
As cloud gaming and the living room converge and shoppable opportunities on CTV continue to multiply, how real and how near are opportunities to merge the two and incorporate interactive shopping into the intensely lean-forward gaming world? Fuse Media CRO Karl Meyer and Spaceback by Rembrand co-founder and CPO Joe Hall discuss opportunities and implementations of shoppable CTV with the hyper-engaged gamer audience in this discussion with Chris Pfaff, CEO of Chris Pfaff Tech Media, at Streaming Media Connect 2026.
Samsung’s Push Toward Shoppable Content
Pfaff begins with Meyer, asking him to draw on previous experience working at Samsung to discuss how shoppable content on CTV can appeal to highly engaged gamers.
Meyer notes that Samsung quickly identified the importance of making the TV experience immersive by integrating on-demand gaming into its smart TVs. “We created an environment that was very sticky and that then led to more exploratory conversations of how can we work with the gaming publishers to monetize the things that they’ve already done and done successfully,” he says. “So for instance, open up new maps to a particular game or [get] new players or weapons if it’s a first-person-shooter experience.” Samsung “did, I think, all the right first initial moves we had to at the time,” including partnerships with companies such as BrightLine and Innovid. “And then shopping came on later.”
How Fuse Keeps Audiences Engaged
Meyer continues, “In my role right now at Fuse, I come in eyes wide open. The team here has done a great job. I’m two months in. They partnered with BrightLine, TripleLift, and GumGum. And so we have that in our stable offerings, but we reverse-engineered the thinking, in that our audience [is] leaning in. They’re very engaged. And so it made sense for us to deliver these interactive components because that audience is 3X more engaged and leaning in and willing to transact or buy stuff on the TV and the streaming experience.”
Pfaff wonders, “[Do] you think that some of the same audiences that would over-index in mobile … may similarly over-index in this kind of interactive shopping context?”
“Completely,” Meyer replies. Fuse is launching a new streaming service called Complex TV on April 1, he shares. “Complex is a popular brand among African-Americans. Very cultural, music-driven, community-based, and that sales team is quite good at the social side of the marketing, going after advertisers that are doing social and YouTube. And we bring the streaming and CTV expertise. And so it’s a great partnership to go after that audience in a really unique way.”
Spaceback Speaks the Audience’s Language
Pfaff turns to Hall to ask what involvement he has with this type of hyper-engaged audience and the activations he’s seen in this area.
Hall says, “We specialize in creative and really exploring that line between content and an ad, and when an ad feels more like content, that’s our expertise. I’m admittedly not a hardcore gamer, but we have worked with a lot of gaming platforms to distribute their ads that feel like content.” He gives the example of a Twitch live stream to promote a new product. His team prioritizes pushing a traditional CTV ad away from speaking to the audience and toward speaking like the audience. “And to everybody’s point here, that is a unique audience, and they expect to be spoken to [in] a specific way, and we want to make it easy for brands to speak that way in these CTV environments,” he sums up.
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