Key Takeaways
- Smartly’s new Roku partnership, Wpromote x Giant Spoon pilot and Horizon Media tie-up collectively bring the precision of social advertising to CTV and every screen beyond it.
- Smartly Synapse, the new AI orchestration and memory layer, turns campaign data, business context, and user input into coordinated action across Smartly’s AI agents, creating a continuous loop from planning through execution to optimization.
Smartly, the AI-powered advertising technology platform, has partnered with Roku to bring the speed, precision, and measurability of social advertising to connected TV.
The deal connects Smartly directly to Roku Ads Manager, Roku’s outcomes-driven CTV platform, through the Roku Ads API. Being the No. 1 TV streaming platform in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, CTV campaigns using the same tools you already use for social can be used on Roku.
The Roku news caps a busy stretch for Smartly. The company introduced Smartly Synapse, the intelligent AI orchestration and memory layer behind every Smartly AI Agent, expanded its partnership with Horizon Media Holdings and announced a new partnership with Wpromote x Giant Spoon to embedded its creative and media activation capabilities into the activation layer of the agency’s Polaris IQ operating system.
How Roku Grows Smartly’s Business
The deal with Roku tackles a problem every performance marketer knows well. CTV has long promised reach, but it rarely delivered the rigor and incrementality of social. By plugging social workflows directly into Roku’s streaming inventory, B2B marketers can skip the separate build process that has kept TV streaming on the sidelines of performance budgets.
“CTV’s performance era is here,” said Laura Desmond, CEO of Smartly. “The best advertising follows attention across every screen, and streaming is where we can now finally unlock the same proven results. Partnering with Roku brings the same rigor, scale, and incrementality advertisers have built on social to the biggest screen in the home. Together, we are creating a structural shift in how brands grow.”
Patrick Harris, SVP, global advertising sales and partnerships at Roku, noted advertisers want CTV to work as hard as their best-performing channels
“At Roku, we are strategically positioned to deliver that at scale,” said Harris. This partnership with Smartly makes it simple for brands to bring the speed and precision of social into TV, enabling them to turn proven strategies into measurable growth on the biggest screen.”
A Closer Partnership with Wpromote x Giant Spoon
The Roku deal comes at the same time Smartly is partnering with Wpromote x Giant Spoon, embedding its creative and media activation capabilities into the activation layer of the agency’s Polaris IQ operating system. The move sharpens the speed and precision with which the agency turns insight into in-market execution, connecting consumer insight, creative, and media in a continuous loop from planning through optimization.
The partnership grew out of a structured pilot across a broad set of client accounts before expanding to a full-scale rollout, and the early numbers are hard to ignore. Within the activation layer, a server-to-server integration with Google Analytics helped one client achieve a 29% increase in lower-funnel ROAS on 26% less spend, powered by Smartly’s Predictive Budget Allocation. Campaign builds that once required market-by-market production now deploy across 50 geo-targeted markets in the same timeframe. Manual reporting time dropped by as much as 93%, returning hours to the teams responsible for strategy and creative thinking.
The most valuable thing we can do for a client is help them get from insight to impact with confidence, said Andrea Bendzick, CEO of Wpromote x Giant Spoon.
“That means understanding what consumers feel about a brand at every stage of the journey, connecting insights to creative and media strategy at the speed the market demands, and making sure great ideas come to life at every touchpoint with the level of accountability the CFO requires,” said Bendzick. “Our partnership with Smartly frees our teams to focus on the big thinking that drives growth, while giving clients confidence in every dollar they spend.”
Horizon Media Turns Audience Intelligence Into Performance
Additionally, Smartly expanded its partnership with Horizon Media Holdings, parent company of the world’s largest independent media agency. The deal makes Smartly the first SaaS platform activation partner to bring Blu audience segments directly into social, commerce, and connected TV campaign workflows through the Blu Audience API. The early results back the approach: in initial campaigns, Smartly delivered nearly double the creative engagement compared with standard audience approaches and reduced cost per order by 35%.
“The Blu Platform represents years of investment in understanding how people actually make decisions,” said Bob Lord, president of Horizon Media. “Partnering with Smartly means that intelligence no longer stops at the insight stage; it travels all the way through to the creative and the buy. For our clients, that’s the difference between knowing your audience and actually winning them.”
“Audience intelligence is even more valuable when you have the ability to quickly act on it,” said Smartly’s Desmond. “By bringing Blu audiences directly into Smartly, we’re helping brands move faster from insight to activation in real time, and turn that into stronger performance across every channel
Smartly Synapse Powers the Platform’s AI Agents
Smartly also introduced Smartly Synapse, the intelligent AI orchestration and memory layer behind every Smartly AI Agent. Built on years of cross-channel creative, media, and performance intelligence, and continuously shaped by real-world outcomes, Synapse transforms millions of signals into actions that help you plan smarter, execute faster, and drive stronger results.
Acting as the memory behind Smartly’s AI agents, it synthesizes company context, user behavior, market trends, pre-launch intelligence, and performance data at scale, giving the planning, execution, and optimization agents the context they need to turn intent into action. Maxwell Tang, chief product officer at Smartly, stated Synapse is the intelligent AI orchestration and memory layer behind their AI agents.
“It augments Smartly’s existing platform, turning campaign data, business context, and user input into coordinated action,” said Tang. “We built Smartly Synapse for brands and agencies managing complex media budgets and fragmented workflows. Our goal is simple: help marketers reduce manual handoffs, make faster decisions, and improve outcomes across channels.”
