Cannes Crowd Gets Crash Course In Titan OS’s European Expansion
Titan OS CEO Jacinto Roca
There’s no shortage of panels, parties, or puffery at Cannes Lions. Which is what made Titan OS’s second annual Advertising Summit at the Hotel Martinez stand out. Despite the marked absence of any 90s music acts and/or copious amounts of rosé, they managed to get over 150 top industry execs to show up for an hour-long presentation about the future of the TV operating system.
Or Titan’s anyway.
And it wasn’t just because the emcee was so charming.
(Though no doubt that helped.)
TVREV’s Alan Wolk introduced the Titan OS Advertising Summit
Titan OS’s future is looking a lot brighter thanks to the announcement of a major new partnership with Vestel, the Turkish OEM that controls a hefty chunk—15%—of the 40% of the European smart TV market that still isn’t locked into a walled garden. That stat matters because while the U.S. TV OS market is pretty much sewn up with everyone from the major OEMs to digital players like Roku and Amazon in the game, Europe’s still got turf up for grabs.
And Titan OS is making its move.
CEO Jacinto Roca, CCO Bart Bomers and Vestel’s Deputy General Manager Atinc Ogut were on stage to reflect on how, with Vestel, Titan OS now has a path to reach millions of new viewers across Europe—viewers who might otherwise get funneled into someone else’s ecosystem.
It’s a huge win for Titan OS, as it gives them much broader reach and the very real ability to claim they are Europe’s alternative to all those walled gardens.
Titan OS CCO Bart Bomers and Vestel Deputy General Manager Atinc Ogut
Making the Home Screen Work Harder
Next up was Rees Martin Hughes, Titan’s VP of Data, who introduced the latest update to their offering: a homepage video banner that takes advantage of what everyone with a smart TV already knows—when you turn it on, that home screen is the first thing you see.
Titan’s video banners let subscription services use that real estate to drive subscriptions and engagement.
Rees Martin Hughes, Titan OS VP of Data and Charles Manning, Kochava CEO
And to measure all that action, there is Kochava.
The Idaho-based company’s CEO, Charles Manning, joined the session to talk about how their attribution tech is powering Titan’s new banner format. His company’s performance data showed that a major SVOD partner using this feature saw a 38% year-over-year bump in subscriptions.
While the impact of must-see content can’t be dismissed, a number that big surely owes major props to a well thought out CTV home page strategy.
Congrats, anonymous client!
Finding the Viewers Linear Can’t Reach
The final segment of the event focused on Titan’s new incremental reach product, introduced by Joe Evea, SVP Advertising and Retail Media.
Incremental reach has been a key driver of CTV ad spend in the US market, but its usefulness in Europe is just now coming into view, as broadcast TV viewership continues to erode and advertisers are scrambling to find the audiences they’ve lost.
CTV, of course, is proving to be an excellent way to reach those missing or light linear viewers
Joe Evea, Titan OS SVP Advertising and Retail Media
To illustrate just how useful CTV advertising can be as a way to reach those hard-to-reach audiences, Victoria Smith, the Unilever lead at Mindshare UK was featured in a video case study.
The campaign she highlighted, which ran during the 2025 Six Nations rugby tournament, used Titan OS inventory to find rugby fans no longer watching traditional TV. The results: 28% incremental reach, a 98% video completion rate, and 23% of viewers hadn’t seen a second of broadcast—help prove out the value of CTV for European advertisers.
Why the TVOS Fight Is the Real Streaming War
Why were there 150 people there, including some heavy hitters from Wall Street (Rich Greenfield and Brandon Ross from Lightshed and Nick MacShane from Progress Partners, for example)?
It’s because, as we’ve been telling you for the past 18 months, the biggest battle in streaming right now isn’t about content or even ad tech—it’s about who controls the operating system. The TVOS is the gateway (or gatekeeper—your choice) to everything on the actual TV. Whoever owns it owns the experience, the data, and especially, the money.
As noted, in the U.S., there isn’t a lot of white space in the OS market. But in Europe, where 40% of smart TVs don’t yet have a proprietary OS, the board is still wide open.
Which leaves plenty of room for well thought out white label operating systems like Titan OS, whose new partnership with Vestel makes them a much more viable alternative to the walled gardens
And Of Course There Was Jamón
Titan OS is based in Barcelona, and so rather than copious amounts of rosé, the evening ended with a very civilized array of Spanish treats— everything from specially sliced jamón to paella, gazpacho, and lots of bebidas, con or sin alcohol.
Because it was Cannes, after all.
