Major carrier Verizon has partnered up with Samsung to feature content and Yahoo Gemini native ads from its Oath media network on Bixby Home. This partnership will not be limited to Samsung Galaxy devices sold on Verizon’s network but will see Bixby Home sporting ads and content from Oath across the nation, and even in some international markets. Any Samsung device that supports Bixby and the Bixby Home app, including the flagship Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S9 families, along with the Galaxy Note 8, will be eligible for Oath content and advertising, if Verizon decides to deploy the marketing in the area that the device is sold in.
The deal will see Samsung device owners given access to natively presented content from Verizon’s Go90 streaming platform, as well as Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, and Yahoo Newsroom. The Galaxy Apps and Game Launcher tools will also feature native advertising powered by the Yahoo Gemini platform. Samsung owners will be able to access sports coverage and scores, breaking news, stock prices, and finance news, along with all of the content featured on Go90, and they will be able to access it all seamlessly through the Bixby Home experience. This, of course, is all regardless of carrier, and will work retroactively on any devices that support Bixby Home, even those bought before the deal was inked.
Samsung’s Bixby and Verizon’s Oath joining forces is an interesting proposition simply because both services have not seen enough exposure to the masses to hit the targets set for them in the past. While far from a failure, Oath and Go90 have both struggled to find a real purpose in Verizon’s portfolio. Bixby, meanwhile, has been shunned by a large number of Samsung device owners, as evidenced by the online community’s ongoing efforts to remap the Bixby button to another function and Samsung’s continuous efforts to make sure that doesn’t happen. By joining together, Verizon is offering Oath to a wider audience, and Samsung is giving people who may have otherwise largely forgotten about Bixby in favor of Google Assistant or something else a reason to give the AI assistant a chance.