Fubo has released in beta on select Roku devices a new feature that lets users display up to four simultaneous streams at once. 

The virtual MVPD provider first debuted its Multiview feature on premium Apple TV devices back in 2020. According to Digital Trends, which dug into Fubo's announcement today, users of Roku's high-end Ultra devices will be able to put up to four channels at once on their screen at once time.

Users of lower end Roku Express 4K and 4K+, and Roku Streaming Stick 4K and 4K+, will be confined to two simultaneous streams. 

In a business catering to fans of live sports, Fubo's Multiview feature bests a similar offering from rival YouTube TV, which only lets users access select channels. 

“Multiview has been one of our most loved features, and we’re thrilled to expand it to Roku users,” said Isaac Josephson, senior VP of product management, Fubo, in a statement. “With Multiview and a suite of product features that enable content discovery and personalization, Fubo’s goal is to ensure fans never miss a moment of their favorite content.”

Roku on Tuesday released detail of its latest product upgrade to its top-of-the-line "Ultra" streaming gadget. 

The updated device features a new quad-core processor specifically built to enhance the quality of streaming, with capabilities for 4K, HDR10+, Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos, as well as support for WiFi 6.

Also Read: Viewers Can Now Find Roku Channels Through Google TV's Search Tools

Roku says its new Ultra operates 30% faster than its other players.

The device, the company said, is made even faster by the integration of machine learning, which predicts which app you’ll likely open next and tees it up to launch instantaneously.

Other features include a lost remote mode, wireless headphone capabilities, and customizable quick launch shortcuts.

Speaking of remotes, Roku last spring debuted the second edition of its Voice Remote Pro, which comes bundled with the Roku Ultra.

Alongside the standard features, the Voice Remote Pro has backlit buttons, USB charging, and two new buttons: quick launch and live TV guide.

As part of its broader product upgrade cycle, Roku also highlighted some key changes to its content recommendations and home page.

Roku said in a release that it will be revamping the Roku Mobile App, which previously allowed users to control their TV without the need for a physical remote.

Now, in addition to controlling their video players, the remote app will allow users to discover personalized content recommendations and read IMDb ratings without having to launch a new window.

The app also enable users to favorite their go-to sports teams, even when they’re not at home.

Roku also made slight alterations to its home screen, including the introduction of a “Kids & Family zone.”

But if that isn’t to your preference, the company also introduced the ability to like and dislike content, allowing users some degree of control over what the platform continues to recommend.

Roku said it launched Roku Ads Manager, a self-service platform designed to attract performance marketers who use social media and search and enable them to buy connected TV.

Performance marketers will be able to create campaigns using shoppable ads linked to the Shopify accounts and interactive ads using Ads Manager.

With big companies putting more of their ad dollars into digital, major media companies have been creating self-service buying tools to attract newer, smaller and direct-to-consumer marketers.

Roku has been competing for big advertisers’ budgets, but now has built Ads Manager for advertisers used to the way digital media is bought, targeted and reported. 

“We expect new entrants to be the primary user of this interface. We have had interest from advertisers of every kinds,”  Peter Hamilton, senior director of Ad Innovation at Roku, told Broadcasting+Cable.

There is no minimum budget for Roku Ads Manager users.

"Roku Ads Manager made it incredibly easy for Criquet Shirts to enter the CTV space,” said Hobson Brown, co-founder, Criquet Shirts, which participated in the beta.  “The platform’s intuitive setup and unique interactive ad formats allowed us to quickly create and launch campaigns, all while effectively reaching key geos and audiences on the big screen." 

While most new advertisers using Ads Manager are mid-sized or direct-to-consumer companies, “we are also seeing marketers and advertisers that have pretty substantial budgets for buying search and social. They are familiar with that style of buying and want to translate that to CTV and execute it with a system that is optimizing on their behalf,” he said.

“Digital natives are starting to move into CTV, in droves. A platform like this is certainly designed to help them develop their strategy here, Hamilton said. “We're looking for the growth hackers of CTV to teach us the future of this channel.”

Hamilton said that advertisers will have the opportunity to buy inventory directly from Roku on Roku-owned channels as well as inventory Roku gets from ad-supported apps on the platform. 

Buying direct means pricing is efficient, Hamilton said. 

“We have lots of different waterfalls in ways that we expose our supply to different kinds of platforms and advertisers,” he said. “What's powerful about this is direct access to Roku. That means there is a great amount of price efficiency that comes with it.”

Roku Ads Manager has been in beta for about a year, tested by several hundred advertisers, Hamilton said. 

“It's been fascinating learning from those advertisers and learning exactly what they need to be successful,” he said. “By opening up a solution like this, you have the opportunity to let marketers tell you what the product should be.”

During the beta test, Roku added features to Ads Manager, including an integration with Shopify that enables advertisers to make their ads shoppable and enable viewers to complete purchases using their Roku remote controls.

Ads Manager users can also include Action Ads” in their campaigns. Actions Ads enable viewers to press “OK” on their remotes and send themselves a text about the ad they just saw.  

Hamilton said that Action Ads are one of Roku’s most popuar ad formats. He added that adding interactivity increases brand recall, purchase intent and ultimately sales.

Roku has also built an AI Upscaler tool that takes creative that a marketer has been using on social media and makes it television quality, improving the definition and clarity of images.

“I would highly recommend that markers take creative that's working well for them in other places and bring it to CTV,” he said.

“One of the most exciting things about self-service is that an advertiser can roll out 10, 20, 50 different campaigns and creatives and figure out what’s really resonating with audiences and what's not,” Hamilton said. “And it's not going to take quarters to figure out what's performing better. You know, it in days.”

After the FAST app first launched on Google TV last year, The Roku Channel is now directly integrated into Google TV’s search and recommendation system.

That means Google TV can promote more free content directly through its search tools, making it easier for consumers to discover new titles.

It’s not entirely clear when the change was made, but it was first spotted Monday by Cord Cutters News.

Also Read: The Roku Channel Arrives on Google TV and Android TV CTV Platforms

The move follows a recent rebranding of Google's free-streaming hub to “Google TV Freeplay,” which seems to be a sign that it intends to continue growing its FAST presence.

That, combined with Google’s new Roku integration, suggests that the company hopes to become more competitive by providing users access to a greater variety of cost-effective entertainment options.

That’s a notable goal, especially in a streaming economy where as many as one third of American adults watch FAST services during primetime viewing hours.

MyBundle, the online platform that connects consumers, streaming services and broadband providers announced Wednesday a marketing and distribution agreement with the consumer electronics provider Roku.

According to a LinkedIn post by MyBundle CEO Jason Cohen, the partnership will allow the company’s more than 250 broadband service provider partners to offer new and existing customers a free Roku Streaming Stick 4K.

Cohen indicated that the partnership was aimed to help its broadband partners transition customers away from traditional pay TV.

“It may surprise most, but millions of homes across the country have yet to stream anything at all,” he wrote. “Our broadband partners are providing education and assistance for people still waiting to make the shift to streaming. There’s no better way to start than with a new Roku streaming stick.”

It’s the first time MyBundle has struck a deal involving streaming hardware, but it seems that the company’s service partners will bear the majority of the cost for the Roku remotes — albeit at a wholesale rate.

Cohen also wrote on LinkedIn that “several MyBundle partners will be bundling the new Roku promotion with MyBundle streaming credits.”

MyBundle released a report back in April suggesting a 50% reduction in customer churn when they were offered monthly credits to help offset the cost of their services.

The Roku Streaming Stick 4K, which currently retails for a discounted price of $34.99 (full price $49.99), comes equipped with higher powered a voice remote, HDR10+ picture and integrated Dolby Vision

According to Cohen, eligible customers can claim their Roku Streaming Stick 4K through MyBundle and receive it free of charge.

Roku will package its premium sports content on a new free ad-supported sports (FAST) channel set to launch on August 12. 

The Roku Sports Channel will feature the streaming service’s top-tier sports content, including its weekly MLB Sunday Leadoff live baseball games, live races from Formula E auto racing, and, later this year, NBA G-League games. The channel will also feature sports-themed Roku original programming, including NFL Draft: The Pick Is In, WWE: Next Gen, and Fight Inc: Inside the UFC.

In addition, the channel will include content from Roku partners, including classic boxing matches from boxing promotion company Top Rank, combat sports from Swerve Sports and poker-themed entertainment from PokerGO. 

Also: Roku Beats Forecasts in Q2, Sales Grow 14% to $968 Million

“A curated always-on channel that leads our viewer through the wide variety of premium sports content available for free on The Roku Channel, Roku Sports Channel is an exciting addition to our expanding sports offering," Roku Media head of sports Joe Franzetta said in a statement. “We continue to see audiences enjoy the familiar, lean-back experience FAST offers, especially with sports. Sports is one of our most popular channel genres on The Roku Channel, which makes us so excited to make it even easier for audiences to jump to Roku’s standout programming.” 

Roku continued to exceed the expectations of doubting analysts, growing its user ranks in the second quarter, growing its quarterly revenue by 14% to $968.2 million and increasing the number of active user households by 2 million to 83.6 million. 

Equity analysts had predicted that the streaming company would generate revenue of only $937.9 million in the April to June period.

Engagement time on the Roku platform was up 20% year over year to 30.1 billion hours, while average revenue per user was virtually flat at $40.68. 

Q2 marked Roku's fourth consecutive quarter of positive adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow. 

Roku's stock was up over 5% in after-hours trading as this sentence was being typed. 

Here's a money shot from Roku's Q2 2024 shareholder letter:

With the Roku platform an afterthought in important markets like Europe, equity analysts for some time have written off the company as doomed to be overridden by larger tech companies in the TVOS market, including Amazon, Google and Samsung. 

But at least domestically, Roku’s hegemony is still expanding. 

“For Q3, we estimate total net revenue of $1.010 billion growing 11% YoY, with Platform revenue growing 9% YoY and devices revenue growing 24% YoY. We expect Q3 total gross profit of $440 million and Adjusted EBITDA of $45 million, reflecting our ongoing operational discipline,” Roku CEO Anthony Wood and chief financial officer Dan Jedda said in the latest shareholder letter. 

Streaming platform Roku has picked up streaming rights to Sony Pictures Television’s comedy The Goldbergs, to be made available to viewers for free on The Roku Channel. Starting August 1, all 10 seasons of The Goldbergs also will be featured on a FAST channel exclusively dedicated to the show. 

The Goldbergs is Sony’s latest deal with free streamer Roku. Earlier this month, Sony and the NFL announced that Roku would be airing NFL Network’s two-hour extension of popular weekday panel talker, Good Morning Football, titled GMFB: Overtime. TV stations also have picked up GMFB: Overtime  in syndication, with the Fox Television Stations serving as the launch group in major markets, including New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. 

The Goldbergs entered broadcast syndication in 2017. The show is currently sold to television stations owned by Nexstar Media Group, Sinclair, Hearst Television, Tegna, Sunbeam Television, Gray Television, Cox Media Group and other station groups. The Goldbergs also is available to stream on Hulu. 

The Goldbergs, which is set in the Reagan-era ‘80s, tells the story of 11-year-old Adam, a would-be filmmaker whose subject matter focuses mostly on his overprotective mother, quick-tempered father, rebellious sister, high-strung brother and suave grandfather.

The Goldbergs aired on ABC from 2013 to 2023 and starred Wendi McLendon-Covey, Jeff Garlin, Hayley Orrantia, Sean Giambrone, Troy Gentile, George Segal, Patton Oswalt and Sam Lerner. The show is executive produced by Adam F. Goldberg, who also created it, along with Seth Gordon and Doug Robinson. Sony Pictures Television and Happy Madison Productions produced.

Smart TV maker TCL said it launched its streaming service, TCLtv Plus, on Roku devices and TVs made by TCL that use the Roku TV operating system.

The company also said it is replacing the current TCL app with a new TCLtv Plus app, which will give viewers an enhanced user experience and access to it portfolio of more than 350 free ad-supported streaming TV channels.

“Roku delivers a brilliant user interface and seamless viewer experience, and we are excited to take this next leap in TCL’s dynamic growth story,” Mark Zhang, president of TCL North America, said. “Our partnership with Roku firmly establishes TCLtv Plus as a powerful force in the streaming ecosystem.”

TCL has been working with Roku for more than a decade and millions of TCL smart TVs with Roku operating systems have been shipped.

“Roku is the #1 platform for streaming entertainment in the U.S., and TCLtv Plus is a very welcome addition to our premium offering,” Roku TV VP Tom McFarland said. “This new channel is a natural next step in our longstanding partnership with TCL, and we are thrilled to continue collaborating with their team.”

TCLtv Plus has launched several original titles produced using artificial intelligence, including a sci-fi film short, Message in a Bot, which will debut on the service on July 22. 

Other AI projects are in the development pipeline. 

TCLtv Plus said that in addition to its own content library,  the Roku launch will allow an even wider audience to engage with its programming choices.

Access Advance, the patent pool behind the HEVC video compression standard, is suing Roku, which it says continues to use its technology in streaming products without paying tribute. 

"Despite long-term efforts by Advance to resolve patent infringements in good faith, Roku remains unwilling to voluntarily legalize its sales of HEVC capable products," the patent pool representing 43 licensors and 23,000 patents covering around 80% of all HEVC tech patents, said in a statement. 

"In response, Advance licensors have chosen to begin enforcement actions to facilitate a level playing field for the pool’s existing licensees. As part of their infringement suits, the pool licensors are seeking payment of past royalties from Roku and an injunction against continuing infringement," the group added. 

Also known as H.265 or MPEG-H Part 2, HEVC is a crucial compression standard for 4K streaming, significantly reducing the required bitrate.

The Roku suit follows similar legal action earlier this year against HP Inc. and ASUSTeK Computer Inc.

The pool said it's attracted over 320 licensees, including Dell, Google, LG, Microsoft, OPPO, Huawei, Panasonic, Sony, and Lenovo.

Roku is about to launch a weekly trivia game on its home screen.

Starting Tuesday, users of the streaming company's mega-popular TVOS platform can play a round (or more) of trivia that tests their knowledge of entertainment.

Roku says that those who play the weekly game will find “a little help from Roku City characters and Easter eggs.”

Also Read: Max’s Dragons Seen Flying Over Roku City Promoting Season 2 of ‘Game of Thrones’ Prequel

“We are focused on expanding monetization of the Roku Home Screen, bolstering programmatic ad capabilities, and growing Roku-billed subscriptions,” Roku CEO Anthony Wood wrote in the company’s Q1 2024 letter to shareholders. 

“Advertisers seeking to maximize ROI need ad solutions with significant reach and innovative ad technology — our business remains well-positioned to capture the billions of dollars in traditional-TV ad budgets that will shift to streaming,” Wood added

Roku grew its platform revenue to $755 million in the first quarter of 2024, up 19% year over year.

And while the company hasn’t released specific figures on how much money it makes from ad deals, Wood said Roku generated its revenue “primarily from the sale of advertising.”

The company, which launched Roku City in 2018 as a way to integrate advertisements into virtual billboards, has already leveraged that forum in order to expand its ad offerings.

“Our ongoing enhancements to our Home Screen are helping to drive engagement, with Streaming Hours originating from the Home Screen Menu more than doubling YoY in Q1,” Wood also wrote. This growing engagement creates more monetization opportunities.

And while its new trivia feature lacks an immediate commercial element, the more eyes Roku has on its home screen, the more bargaining power its gains in future negotiations.

Roku has already had ad partnerships with key players in the streaming industry like Max and Paramount Plus, and currently has plans in the works to develop video ads for Roku City.

For some users of Roku-powered TCL smart TVs, it’s a nightmare moment from, well, a soap opera.

With the recent upgrade to Roku OS version 13, some of these users are complaining on Reddit and in Roku’s community forum that the motion-smoothing feature on their sets, which Roku calls “Action Smoothing,” is stuck on, with no way to turn it off. 

TCL has action smoothing out of the blue from r/Roku

Users complain that there’s now no way on their TCL sets to turn Action Smoothing off, either in general settings, or during the streaming of content with picture settings. 

Roku has responded in the online forums that it's looking into the issue. And as The Verge noted, not all users of TCL Roku sets are affected. (Our 55-inch TCL was just upgraded to version 13 and Action Smoothing wasn't enabled.)

“Video interpolation,” aka “motion smoothing,” is a widely available feature in smart TVs intended to smooth out fast-unfolding, potentially blurry action sequences in sports and various other action-oriented programming by adding extra frames to the video.

Different TV brands call motion smoothing different things. LG, for instance, calls it TrueMotion, while Sony refers to as Motionflow.

Call it whatever you like, but many consumers absolutely detest motion smoothing because of the hyper-realistic “soap-opera effect” it creates for most video content.

It's enough of a societal issue that Tom Cruise even posted a PSA on it back in late 2018.

After poaching former Publicis Groupe exec Jay Askinasi to lead its ad-sales team back in late January, Roku has announced Askinasi’s first two major hires. 

Sarah Harms will join the streaming company as VP of advertising marketing, responsible for “overall strategy and execution of marketing and measurement efforts across Roku’s advertising business.”

Harms spent the past five years at Microsoft, where she oversaw national sales and account management for the tech giant’s buy-side ad-technology business, formerly known as Xandr.

Sal Candela will join Roku as VP of global agency partnerships, where he will “elevate partnerships with Roku's largest advertising clients.” He was previously head of agency development for Spotify. 

Harms and Candela join Roku as the company enters the competitive upfront TV ad-sales market.

“Expanding the Roku media team marks a pivotal time for the company, as Roku continues to grow its market-leading scale,” Askinasi said in a statement. “I have no doubt that Sarah will help take our business to new heights with her proven ability to deliver scalable, valuable solutions to advertisers. Sal’s deep industry knowledge and agency relationships will be advantageous to our business as media investments continue to shift towards TV streaming this upfront season.”

After securing a groundbreaking deal that brings live major-league American sports to free ad-supported streaming, details regarding Roku's acquisition of Major League Baseball's Sunday Leadoff games package have begun to emerge.

According to The Athletic, Roku is only paying $10 million a season to stream the 18-game package on the Roku Channel.

Also read: Roku and MLB Make It Official, 'Sunday Leadoff' Is Coming to The Roku Channel

For its part, incumbent rights holder NBCUniversal reportedly paid around $30 million to stream Sunday Leadoff on Peacock the last two seasons. The Athletic also reported that NBCU offered the same $10 million to retain the package. 

Citing an unidentified source, The Athletic also said the deal has an "opt-out" clause, although it's not clear as to whether that belongs to Roku or MLB.

The agreement is also described as being somewhat backloaded, with Roku paying $10 million this season, $8 million in 2025 and $12 million in 2026. 

Sunday Leadoff debuted on Roku Channel on Sunday, with the Boston Red Sox beating the St. Louis Cardinals 11-3. 

Roku and Major League Baseball have made it official -- live games from a major American team sport will appear on a FAST channel for the first time, with the league's 18-game Sunday Leadoff package debuting on the Roku Channel on May 19. 

A full schedule is below. 

Peacock licensed Sunday Leadoff the past two seasons, with parent company NBCUniversal paying a reported $30 million last year to do so.

“As television programming, live sports, and the leagues have fragmented across networks, apps, and multiple packages, Roku — home to all of them — plays an increasingly crucial role for viewers and advertisers,” said Charlie Collier, president, Roku Media, in a statement.  “With this deal, Roku delivers free, live, weekly Sunday baseball and 24/7 baseball curation, destinations, and channels across our platform. The lead-in to all of television is now the lead-off for Sunday baseball as well. It’s a terrific partnership.”

Added MLB Deputy Commissioner of Business and Media Noah Garden: “With free games available to anyone, MLB games on Roku will be widely accessible to fans. Since Roku serves as an entertainment gateway for millions, this partnership offers a valuable new promotional and distribution platform for MLB games and content.”

As noted in this MLB FAQ, the Roku Channel is available well beyond the Roku device OS platform, with connected TV platforms including Amazon Fire TV and Google TV, as well as the open internet, providing access to the FAST. 

iSpot was named a preferred third-party measurement partner for Roku, providing metrics for campaigns including unique reach, frequency, verified ad exposures and outcomes.

iSpot will also be integrating Roku’s Advertising Watermark to validate the authenticity of ad inventory originating on the Roku platform. 

As part of the deal, iSpot will  gain access to Roku’s exclusive, authenticated audience information, which will buttress iSpot Data Connect, a next-generation audience measurement infrastructure for currency and outcome measurement.

The announcement was expected to be part of Roku's NewFront presentation Tuesday.

“CTV advertising has undoubtedly made a huge leap forward with this partnership between Roku and iSpot, two of the leaders in the industry,” GroupM executive director of investment innovation Mike Fisher said. 

“Roku’s vast audience combined with the measurement capabilities of iSpot will allow our brand partners to optimize their advertising with confidence in our accuracy,” Fisher said.

Roku has been basing guarantees for streaming ads on Nielsen since 2015. In 2016, Roku bought addressable ad insertion technology from Nielsen. As part of tie deal, Roku was able to integrate Nielsen data in to the Roku OneView ad buying platform.

Roku data has also been a factor in Nielsen’s Total Ad Ratings cross-platform measurement product. Data from Roku also are included in Nielsen’s big-data national ratings service.

“This is a game-changer for the industry — not just for iSpot or Roku, but for the entire advertising ecosystem looking to harness the scale and power of the leading TV streaming platform and capitalize on the most robust streaming measurement,” iSpot founder and CEO Sean Muller said. “It’s also critical marketers have the most reliable and actionable audience measurement to base decisions on as they shift budgets from traditional TV to streaming.”

With audiences from Roku eventually applied across all of iSpot’s  measurement products, the broader streaming TV marketplace — including agencies, brands and media sellers — will benefit from precise, streaming-centric measurement to capitalize on the opportunity that exists for CTV, the companies said.

“Roku wants to use its unique assets built on the foundation of its massive streaming footprint of 81 million-plus streaming households to further the measurement across all streaming channels and linear TV to help solve for the problem of fragmentation in the industry,” Louqman Parampath, VP of Product management at Roku said. “Together with iSpot, we believe improving measurement for the entire ecosystem will help drive better results for advertisers, but also drive more yield for publishers.”

Let the games begin on Roku, which made a deal with NBCUniversal to create a new destination on the Roku homepage screen menu that highlights coverage of the upcoming Paris Summer Olympics and pushes users to NBCU’s streamer Peacock.

The NBC Olympic Zone on Roku will feature a replay row, clips, and highlight reels that will take users directly to Peacock, which will live-stream every Olympic event.

Roku and other streamers have been sprinting to add sports to their lineups.

“Our users are going to have an amazing summer with the NBC Olympic Zone on Roku, directing them to Peacock and all the highlights, replays, and live competition coming straight from Paris,” Tedd Cittadine, VP of content partnerships at Roku, said. “This is a unique, exciting opportunity for us, streamers, and sponsors looking to align their brands with this global powerhouse sports moment.” 

Peacock, going for the gold, announced a pre-Olympics $2-per-month price increase.

“Creating partnerships like the NBC Olympic Zone on Roku, which emphasize tentpole content in the user experience on our partner platforms, has proven to provide deeper engagement,” Matt Schnaars, president, NBCUniversal Content Distribution, said. “NBCUniversal’s coverage of the Paris Olympics will be the can’t-miss event of 2024 and this partnership displays the type of experience we can create with partners like Roku to drive users into Peacock.”

The NBC Olympic Zone on Roku will help streamers discover live and upcoming events, stay up to date with a Medal Count module, watch pre-Olympics highlights from the U.S. team trials and engage with athlete profile and other Olympics-related content.

Roku said it made a deal to provide customers of The Trade Desk with data from Roku that will enable them to better optimize campaigns for streaming viewers.

Using Roku’s automatic content recognition data, advertisers working with The Trade Desk can suppress incremental households that have seen their linear TV ads, a capability advertisers have had directly with Roku.

On Roku’s last earnings call with analysts, company executives said that working more closely with programming demand-side platforms was a priority as it looked to boost ad sales. The announcement came before Roku's NewFront presentation Tuesday afternoon.

Also Read: Video Ads Come to Roku City

“Matching Roku’s reach with the power of The Trade Desk’s innovative solutions will unlock new ways for marketers to reach the right TV streaming audiences strategically,” Jay Askinasi, senior VP, head of global media revenue and growth at Roku, said. “We strive to be even more interoperable with the most prevalent buying platforms in the market to meet our advertisers where they are. It’s simple to use and highly effective at reducing waste for buyers, and it will improve the ad experience for our millions of viewers.”  

Advertisers will be be able to use Roku Media audience and behavioral data and then access Roku inventory through The Trade Desk in private marketplace arrangements. 

“CTV has emerged as one of the most powerful digital advertising channels on the open internet, and this new partnership with Roku will enable The Trade Desk’s clients to put valuable new data insights to work and fully optimize their campaigns,” The Trade Desk chief revenue officer Jed Dederick said. “We are excited by Roku’s focus on interoperability and thrilled to forge a closer partnership as we bring the full power of the open internet to bear for all advertisers.” 

TVOS giant Roku announced plans to launch video-based ads on its home screen.

The company’s “Roku City” homepage backdrop — which the streaming company says reaches nearly 120 million viewers each day — currently offers digital billboard stills that scroll by while viewers idle on the menu.

In discussing its video homepage ads for the first time last week during Roku’s first-quarter earnings call, company co-founder and CEO Anthony Wood didn't say if the ads will play with sound. But he did note that Roku is “also testing other types of video ad units, looking at other experiences we can add to the home screen that would be where we can innovate more video advertising.

“To give you some examples of the kinds of things we’re looking at on the home screen, on the home screen today, there’s the premier video app we called the Marquee and that traditionally has been a static ad,” Wood added. “We’re going to add video to that ad. So that will be the first video ad that we add to the home screen.”

It's still not clear exactly how the videos will integrate with Roku’s current home screen, but on-screen ad blocks that are currently still may soon be video slots.

In addition to video ads, Roku is preparing to increase personalized marketing on its home screen, focusing on streaming services and video-on-demand content to fine-tune recommendations for viewers.

The disclosure comes just a few weeks after the company filed a patent for technology that would allow it to show ads even while Roku TVs are being powered by an outside HDMI-connected, non-Roku device.

There are risks involved here. 

Just this month, Roku used its home screen as a forum to promote Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour film, with a number of users finding the feature obnoxious and sharing tips to disable it.

But Wood said the changes will help consumers find more useful content and, in return, hopes they drive up sales.

Roku shares rose (temporarily) in after-hours trading Thursday as the streaming company reported markedly better-than-expected revenue growth in the first quarter, with sales increasing by 19% to $881.5 million. 

Equity analysts had forecasted revenue growth of only around 14.8%.

Active accounts (rechristened in Roku’s Q1 quarterly shareholder letter as ”streaming households“) rose by 1.6 million, reaching 81.6 million homes. 

And engagement on the Roku platform rose 23% year over year to 30.8 billion streaming hours. 

Roku reported a net loss of $65 million for the first quarter versus a $175 million loss from January to March 2023, but did report adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) of $30 million. It was the third consecutive quarter in which the company touted positive adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow. 

"The biggest top-line driver here should be advertising revenue, which appears to have rebounded nicely in the first quarter, as subscription streaming distribution revenue decelerated," noted equity analyst Michael Nathanson. 

As has often been the case with recent Roku earnings reports, solid growth data for revenue and active accounts is met with downer forward-looking guidance. 

“Looking ahead, we face difficult year-over-year growth rate comparisons within streaming service distribution activities,” Roku CEO Anthony Wood and chief financial officer Dan Jedda wrote in Roku’s shareholder letter. “This headwind is due to past price increases and a higher mix shift toward ad-supported offerings. In Q2, we estimate total net revenue of $935 million, total gross profit of $410 million and Adjusted EBITDA of $30 million.”

Update: Shares were down more than 8% as of regular-day trading Friday. 

Roku said that after investigating a security breach that was reported in early March, it detected a second, larger intrusion that involved around 576,000 accounts. 

The streaming company released a statement on the matter Friday. 

Once again, the security breach involved "credential stuffing," whereby hackers who have already stolen user names and passwords knock on the door of Roku accounts, hoping users abide by the bad habit of using the same credentials for multiple services. 

"There is no indication that Roku was the source of the account credentials used in these attacks or that Roku’s systems were compromised in either incident," Roku said in its Friday statement. "Rather, it is likely that login credentials used in these attacks were taken from another source, like another online account, where the affected users may have used the same credentials. In less than 400 cases, malicious actors logged in and made unauthorized purchases of streaming service subscriptions and Roku hardware products using the payment method stored in these accounts, but they did not gain access to any sensitive information, including full credit card numbers or other full payment information."

In addition to resetting passwords for affected users, Roku said it will now adopt two-factor authentication. 

Roku has filed for a new patent that will allow it to show ads while TVs powered by its operating system are paused, event if the television is under the control of a different device ecosystem connected to it via HDMI.

The patent application was discovered last week by Janko Roettgers, who wrote about it in his Lowpass newsletter. 

The scheme would allow Roku to expand its advertising business, even to those engaging with other TVOS platforms, say Apple TV, on Roku-powered TVs. 

As The Verge noted, the scheme is fraught with possible bad outcomes if Roku doesn't get the tech right, with the streaming company potentially disturbing its users as they try to engage with other TVOS platforms. 

But Roku already has the means to monetize such a scheme. For instance, it began selling sponsorships for its Roku City screensaver last year. 

Roku reported 13% growth in the fourth quarter for platform revenue, reaching nearly $830 million. 

With the playoffs approaching, Roku and the National Basketball Association said they are launching the first NBA free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) channel.

For a limited time,the NBA FAST channel will be available exclusively through The Roku Channel.

The NBA FAST channel will be part of the NBA Zone, an area where streamers can find NBA games, highlights, documentaries, series and other programming.

“We’re thrilled to expand our partnership with Roku with the NBA’s first FAST Channel and other NBA content and functionality that will serve as an enticement and on-ramp to live NBA games,” said Greg Beaton, NBA senior VP of content partnerships. “This partnership supports our goal of reaching NBA fans with our content in innovative ways.”

The NBA is currently in talks about its future media rights with current partners Disney/ESPN and Warner Bros. Discovery. The league is expected to make streaming a bigger part of its distribution strategy.

As part of this launch, the NBA App will be integrated within the NBA Zone, offering users quick access to the latest league news, behind-the-scenes stories, and game clips. NBA League Pass, the league’s premium live out-of-market game subscription service, will also be available to purchase within the offering.

“Bringing the No. 1 TV streaming platform in the U.S. and the NBA together in one package is not only good for the fans — it’s also great for advertisers looking to tap into the power of marketing in sports,” Kristina Shepard, VP, global advertising sales and partnerships at Roku, said. “We’re excited to give brands the opportunity to reach our expanding, highly engaged audience with some of the biggest moments of the basketball season yet to come.”

Roku said its original programming unit will work with The Handy Foundation to help provide underrepresented communities with more opportunities to get below-the-line jobs in the entertainment and film industry.

Below-the-line jobs include assistant editors, production coordinators, digital imaging technicians and makeup artists.

Already, apprenticeships have been created on series including Honest Renovations, Meet Me in Rome and Morimoto’s Sushi Master.

“This announcement marks a pivotal moment in our partnership with Roku, which initially began with placing one Handy Foundation fellow on Un Millón De Gracias! in 2023. The expansion of our collaboration with Roku Originals reinforces our mission to uplift underrepresented talent in the film and entertainment industry,” said Handy Foundation CEO, Ri-Karlo Handy. “With Roku’s support, we are excited to continue strategizing on how we extend our impact even further, empowering individuals from all walks of life to share their stories and contribute to a more inclusive cultural landscape.”

Also Read: Sunwise Rises With Focus on Positive, Diverse Series

The Handy Foundation has also worked with organizations such as the California Film Commission, NAACP, Entertainment Industry Foundation (EIF), studios, production companies, unions, and guilds. 

The collaboration between The Handy Foundation and Roku Originals, led by Melissa Hamilton, head of production, seeks to grant access to a diverse array of expertise within Hollywood’s trade craft.

“As our original programming continues to grow in both popularity and scale, the choice is clear for Roku: Take the opportunity now to champion greater inclusion in our industry,” said David Eilenberg, head of content, Roku Media. “The Handy Foundation’s work with underrepresented or overlooked professionals makes them a fantastic partner for us, and we are thrilled to take on this significant, expanded initiative.”

Hackers have stolen personal data, including credit-card authentication credentials, of 15,363 Roku users, with individual user account data selling for just 50 cents each on the Dark Web. 

Some Roku users were locked out of their accounts, with data thieves coopting them to make nefarious in-app purchases. 

Roku began to notify affected customers on Friday via email with this message. 

The streaming company also released this statement to Next TV: “Roku’s security team recently detected suspicious activity that indicated a limited number of Roku accounts were accessed by unauthorized actors using login credentials obtained from third-party sources (e.g., through data breaches of third-party services that are not related to Roku). In response, we took immediate steps to secure these accounts and are notifying affected customers. Roku is committed to maintaining our customers’ privacy and security, and we take this incident very seriously.” 

Bleeping Computer was first to report the data breach on Monday. 

The data breach, which occurred "earlier this year," according to Roku, stemmed from what's described as a "credential stuffing" attack, whereby hackers steal usernames and passwords from, say, Roku, then try them out in a range of other services. 

Fortunately, Roku's data doesn't include social security numbers, full payment account numbers, or dates of birth.

Despite a rather strong fourth-quarter earnings report, Roku’s stock price was sent reeling anew two weeks ago when Walmart agreed to pay $2.3 billion to acquire smart TV company Vizio. 

Speaking at a KeyBanc investor event Wednesday, new Roku CFO Dan Jedda sought to downplay the impact of that M&A event. (You can hear the whole speaking engagement here.)

“This was not a surprise to us at all. We were very prepared,” Jedda said. “First of all, we are widely distributed — we have distribution everywhere and distribution is growing. And the one thing about Roku is our streamers love our brand; they asked for us by name." 

He added: “We will continue to work with Walmart. We have a great relationship with them and they’ll continue to sell Roku TVs. If anything, I think it opens up other distribution opportunities … other distributions came proactively to talk to us once that deal was announced.”

Appearing alongside Jedda, Conrad Grodd, Roku's investor relations chief, conceded that Roku’s days of powering Walmart’s house “onn” brand are probably over. Notably, however, Walmart is now selling Roku’s own branded smart TVs.

“Our first-party TV is doing very well,” he said. “It was exclusive to Best Buy in 2023. That was always just the launch plan."

However, Roku TVs have expanded to Amazon, where reviews have been solid. “We’re also in Costco, and we’re actually on walmart.com, doing very well with our first-party TVs. And so distribution is not going to be a problem for us. Again, we’re at 80 million [active users]. We’ll continue to grow. And we’ll do it in a variety of retailers out there, including Walmart, they’ll continue to work with us.”

Roku’s stock price is down about a third since news of Walmart’s serious interest in Vizio broke back in mid-February. 

The reason isn’t just tied to Walmart and Vizio, analysts say.

“The stock has doubled since last quarter on vapor and these results were broadly in line,” equity analyst Michael Nathanson told Next TV last month when we asked the reason for the bearishness. 

We mostly find our Roku experience agreeable. But if a legal disagreement with the streaming OS provider should arise, Roku insists that we should take it up with one of its own lawyers, or an arbitrator. 

And Roku wouldn't let us watch the Lakers game until we agreed to its new Dispute Resolution Terms.

Starting in February, Roku sent out emails to its users encouraging them to read through its terms, which include forced arbitration. Users have been subsequently greeted by an on-screen message when they fire up their Roku OS, informing them that they can either agree with the new TOS — or find another device OS on which to stream their show. The device won't work until the user presses “agree.”

Here's a screenshot taken by a Roku user in a Reddit forum:

The rules include “meet and confer” terms, which require users with a legal beef to first take it up with Roku's lawyers. If that doesn't resolve the issue, their recourse is then arbitration. 

The practice, which distances companies from risk and liability, is hardly new in the tech business. For instance, as this posting was being produced, we received an email from Tile, noting that by continuing to use the company's tracker devices, we will automatically concede to its new TOS. 

However, Roku is drawing flak in Reddit forums because it’s forcing users to agree if they want to continue using its technology, and it offers no clear alternative for users to opt out of the terms and still access their account. 

For its part, TechCrunch encourages Roku users who want to opt out and still watch their Roku-powered smart TV to press agree. But then, within 30 days, it advises the user to send a letter including your name, email, physical address, device model number and (if you have it) your purchase receipt to the address below, informing Roku that you want to respectfully “opt out” of its dispute-resolution terms. 

Stephen Kay, General Counsel, Roku, Inc.
1701 Junction Court, Suite 100
San Jose, CA 95112

After a huge fourth quarter, during which it exceeded revenue growth expectations, narrowed its losses, and surpassed 80 million active users, Roku found its way to the same old jam: another after-hours trading blood bath on the Nasdaq. 

It seems investors were once again spooked on the streaming company following its reserved projections for the ongoing first quarter of 2024: "We remain mindful of near-term challenges in the macro environment and an uneven ad market recovery," Roku wrote in its quarterly letter to shareholders.  

"While we will face difficult YoY growth rate comparisons in streaming services distribution and a challenging M&E environment for the rest of the year, we expect to maintain our Q4 2023 YoY Platform growth rates in Q1," the company added. 

Speaking to Next TV via email, equity analyst Michael Nathanson put it another way: "Because the stock has doubled since last quarter on vapor, these results were broadly in line," he told us. 

Roku shares reached a 19-month high back in November, after the company reported a similarly strong third quarter. 

But this week has been not so good for Roku. It's stock also dropped Monday when it was reported that Walmart is in discussions to possibly by smart TV company Vizio for around $2 billion. 

Roku's Q4 performance was strong across virtually all metrics. 

Quarterly revenue increased by 14% to $984.4 million, while losses closed to $78.3 million vs. $237.2 million a year prior. Both outcomes exceeded equity analysts' forecast. 

Meanwhile, Roku added 4.8 million active users from October 1 through Dec. 31, surpassing the 80 million user milestone. (As one of the Penske showbiz trades noted, that's more users than all of the U.S. pay TV companies have put together.)

With 10 million more users engaging on the Roku platform on Dec. 31 vs. the laste day of 2022, total usage hours spiked by 21% to 29.1 billion. 

The forward-looking metrics, however, were not something Roku's beyond-skittish investors wanted to hear. 

Roku is forecasting first-quarter revenue of $850 million and losses of around $90 million. 

After rising 3.57% during the trading day to reach $94.50 a share, Roku declined nearly 14% after hours, to around $81.47.

Despite its currently dominant position in the North American connected TV market, equity analysts believe Roku will eventually be surpassed by "better capitalized" competitors including Amazon, Google ... and now, perhaps, Walmart. 

Typically subject to the crosswinds of Wall Street, Roku stock has declined more than 7% to around $91 a share since Tuesday, when the Wall Street Journal reported that Walmart is in talks to possibly buy smart TV maker Vizio for around $2 billion. 

Also read: Analyst Says Walmart Buying Vizio Could ‘Disrupt’ CTV Market

While Vizio stock soared in the immediate aftermath of the WSJ story, up over 25% as Broadcasting+Cable reported Tuesday, Roku's latest rush of investor momentum, accrued with the Roku heading into its full-2023/Q4 earnings report on Thursday, was crushed. (Roku stock had been up nearly 9% since the beginning of 2024.)

Influential equity research firm MoffettNathan advised readers in a late Tuesday afternoon investor note to sell Roku stock. 

Walmart accounts for 40% of Roku device sales, principal analyst Michael Nathanson wrote, with Roku's TVOS not only powering Walmart's house brand, Onn, but also budget-priced sets manufactured by makers including TCL and Hisense. Roku also moves a lot of player pucks, dongles and HDMI sticks through Walmart.

"A purchase of Vizio would allow Walmart to prioritize their product over competing low-end sets," Nathanson said. 

Of more concern to Roku is the "platform" side of Roku's business, which accounted for more than 86% of its revenue in the third quarter of last year. Walmart's entry would create another powerful competitor for Roku in the connected-TV advertising market.

"Walmart's reported move to acquire Vizio can be seen as a challenge to the CTV advertising landscape as they can also marry first-party data with full-funnel ad inventory," Nathanson wrote. "Walmart and Amazon both have the ability (and assets) along with Alphabet's YouTube to be highly disruptive to CTV incumbents.

"Ironically, while our negative thesis on Roku (sell, $66 PT) is based on increasing competition from better capitalized rivals, we did not think Walmart was one of those competitors," the analyst added.

Publicis Groupe senior executive Jay Askinasi has agreed to join Roku as the streaming company's top ad sales executive, replacing the departed Alison Levin, who left in November to join NBCUniversal. 

Askinasi will hold the title of global head of media revenue and growth and report to Roku Media President Charlie Collier. The role is even bigger than the one Levin occupied, a source close to the company told us. 

News of Askinasi's hire was first reported by Business Insider and AdAge.

Askinasi currently serves as chief executive officer of Publicis Media Exchange. He rejoined the advertising conglomerate in 2020 after serving stints with what were then AT&T operating units Xandr and WarnerMedia units. 

Roku, which reports fourth-quarter earnings on Feb. 15, touted an 18% uptick in third-quarter "platform" sales (essentially ad revenue) to $786.8 million. 

Roku's volatile Wall Street valuation depends on the company's ability to keep its connected TV advertising revenue expanding, so it's important for the company to get this hire right. 

Right off the bat, Askinasi will face challenges, according to equity analyst Michael Nathanson. 

Roku's "2024 growth driver will have to be CTV advertising, Nathanson wrote in an investor note in December. "While we expect a continued buoyant end-market, we believe that the entrance of better scaled players like Amazon Prime, Netflix and Disney will take increasing market share." 

Disney Cruise Line’s newest ship, the Disney Treasure, is setting a course for Roku City.

An image of the ship will be showcased on Roku’s iconic purple skyline screensaver for the rest of January.

Sharp-eyed viewers will be able to see some of the ships features and activities including the Haunted Mansion Parlor, the Broadway-style show Disney: The Tale of Moana and Castaway Cay, Disney’s private island in The Bahamas.

Roku users flock to Roku City, with 85% of the streamer’s subscribers watching the screensavers when they take a break from streaming content.

“We are thrilled to bring a touch of Disney magic to Roku,” said Jeff Katz, Roku’s U.S. Head of Verticals, Auto, Restaurants, Travel. “At a time when the TV and streaming landscape continues to be fractured, brands are looking for innovative ways to be unmissable. Roku City is a beloved experience for millions of streamers, and we want to bring brands like Disney Cruise Line into a space that brings those viewers joy on the largest screen in the home.

"So, all aboard as Roku City transforms into the ultimate destination for Disney Cruise Line,” he said.

The companies declined to disclose how much Disney is paying for the integration.

All Roku viewers will be able to see the ship in Roku City while it’s afloat.

As part of the campaign, Disney will also be streaming video ads on The Roku Channel across several lines of the Disney Parks & Resorts business.

A year ago at CES 2023 in Las Vegas, Roku unveiled its first-ever lineup of self-branded smart TVs, which Roku designed itself and had manufactured by one of its OEM partners. 

These sets, ranging in sizes from 24 to 75 inches across 11 “Select” and “Plus” series models, were priced from $119-$999, generally competing in the lower and lower-middle ends of the smart TV market. 

At CES 2024, which kicks of next week, Roku will return to Vegas with three high-end versions of its Roku TVs, branded the “Roku Pro Series.” 

Priced at “under $1,500,” according to Roku, the three Pro models will be sized at 55, 65 and 75 inches, and will include high-end features such as 4K QLED display, Mini-LED backlighting, local dimming and enhanced audio technology.

The sets also include AI features that automatically adjust picture quality based on the user’s living-room environment. 

Roku said the new Pro Series models will hit store shelves starting “this spring.” 

Roku, which will also be touting at CES the 10-year anniversary of its operating system driving the smart TVs of OEM partners, has not released the name(s) of the manufacturer for its Pro Series. 

In November, OEM partner Sharp announced that it would debut the very first Roku-powered TV with a high-end OLED display. 

Roku said the title most searched for during 2023 was the The Super Mario Bros. Movie.

The most-searched TV show was Yellowstone for the second straight year, Roku said.

All of the most-searched titles will be available from December 30 to January 1 via the Roku New Year’s Eve Central Experience. 

The experience will also feature interactive trivial, a sweepstakes, deals from DoorDash and a Roku City countdown clock to New Year’s 2024.

Roku also listed the most searched actors and actresses. The top actor was Adam Sandler and Melissa McCarthy led the actresses.

Here are the Top 10 lists for most-searched on Roku:

Top Movies

1. Super Mario Bros.
2. Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
3. Avatar: The Way of Water
4. M3GAN
5. The Little Mermaid
6. Top Gun: Maverick
7. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
8. Transformers: The Rise of the Beasts
9. The Secret Life of Pets
10. Twilight

Top TV Series

1. Yellowstone
2. SpongeBob SquarePants
3. PAW Patrol
4. South Park
5. Bluey
6. The Simpsons
7. The Chosen
8. Gunsmoke
9. Young Sheldon
10. Peppa Pig

Top Actors

1. Adam Sandler
2. John Wayne
3. Tom Hanks
4. Denzel Washington
5. Clint Eastwood
6. Jason Statham
7. Nicolas Cage
8. Kevin Hart
9. Dwayne Johnson
10. Tom Cruise

Top Actresses

1. Melissa McCarthy
2. Sandra Bullock
3. Julia Roberts
4. Jennifer Lopez
5. Jenna Ortega
6. Doris Day
7. Jennifer Lawrence
8. Jennifer Aniston
9. Reese Witherspoon 
10. Anne Hathaway

Roku said it has added destinations for food and home programming to its home screen, making it easier for viewers to find content in those genres.

All Things Food and All Things Home will feature streaming programs from free and subscription services, premium subscriptions and Roku originals.

“The foodies in my life devour the whole genre — one night, it’s Roku’s Great American Baking Show, the next, all things Gordon Ramsay, Chopped, and so much more. Similarly, the home and garden lovers never stop at one source for tips and inspiration,” Roku Media president Charlie Collier said. “Now all passionate food and home lovers can get everything they need with All Things Food and All Things Home, all in one place: Roku. We reach nearly half of the broadband households in the U.S., with hundreds of options across every popular TV brand, in the genres viewers love. So pull up your favorite designer’s chair, grab your favorite bite, and let Roku be your host to All Things you love.”

Roku previously created destinations for live TV and sports. 

In a recent survey commissioned by Roku, 64% of streaming consumers said that if they were searching for something new to watch, they would base a search on genre, and nearly three in four (73%) said they are spending too much time trying to find new content to watch.

The most volatile stock in the TMT universe rebounded to an important milestone Monday, surging more than 8% on the Nasdaq to reach over $100 a share.

It was the first time Roku stock has hit a triple-digit price since April 2022. The latest Roku stock surge came after Cannonball Research analyst Vasily Karasyov upgraded the streaming company to "buy" status. 

Karasyov based his upgrade on what he believes are the better-than-feared recent performance of connected TV advertising. 

Roku has been steadily gaining momentum on Wall Street since the beginning of November, when it beat Q3 forecasts on account growth and revenue. 

The company still has a long way to go to surpass its all-time high of $473.70 a share, reached back in July 2021. 

Still, Roku has recovered quite a bit from bottoming out at nearly $40 a share last December.

Roku said it is working with 3D content company Unity to help mobile app businesses reach potential users with streaming TV.

Combining Roku’s Action Ads with Unity’s user acquisition technology and expertise to create a way to encourage downloads in a frictionless, measurable manner.

“Mobile app marketers seek to maximize their budgets and ad opportunities. TV streaming has become the right performance channel to enable growth and provide channel diversity in a highly competitive market,” said Miles Fisher, senior director, head of emerging and programmatic sales at Roku. “Roku’s scale, tech, and direct connection with the viewer are uniquely positioned to make the largest screen in the home work harder for mobile performance marketers on Unity." 

Viewers can use their Roku remote to initiate the download process of a game onto their chosen mobile device. After downloading, they return to their TV streaming viewing.

“The driving force behind this partnership is to turn CTV into a high-scale performance channel for apps and games,” Omer Kaplan, senior VP for revenue and operations at Unity Grow, said. 

“Savvy app marketers today know that they have to harness every available channel to drive truly incremental and cost-efficient growth, and CTV represents a huge and largely untapped opportunity,” Kaplan said. “By coupling that scaled inventory with Luna from Unity’s robust campaign management and optimization technology, this partnership unlocks unique value for app marketers who are looking to drive performance on home TVs. We believe that there is no better combination of partners more suited to making CTV a successful performance marketing channel  to add to app advertisers‘ UA toolkit.” 

Sharp, which recently returned to the U.S. TV market after an eight-year absence, has rolled out the first smart TVs to use high-end OLED display technology. 

The 55- and 65-inch 4K/HDR10 models, which are available on store shelves now for $1,500 and $2,000 respectively, carry Sharp's "Aquious" sub-branding and feature Dolby Vision IQ and Dolby Atmos tech. (You can read Sharp's product announcement here.)

They're the first sets based on organic light-emitting diode display technology, and not LCD, to be powered by the Roku OS in the nearly decade-old Roku TV program. (Roku OEM partners including TCL and Hisense, as well as Roku itself, have made Roku sets using "quantum dot LED" tech, or "QLED" as it's known, but that is actually classified as a form of LCD.)

Also read: Roku's Chris Larson: ‘We Spend Roughly $1 Billion a Year on R&D. It's Taken Us 15 Years to Get Here. To Say You're Going to Spend $200 Million and Catch That in 6 Months Is a Lot of Bravado’

OLED technology is featured in the high-end models of Korean manufacturers including Samsung and LG, as well as Japan's Sony Corp. In fact, The Verge speculates that the Sharp Aquious panels are probably made by LG. 

As for Sharp, the venerable Japanese electronics brand is now majority-owned by Taiwan's Foxconn. The company made a return of sorts to the North American TV market last year, after selling its factory in Mexico -- and its North American branding rights -- to Hisense back in 2015.

Sharp subsequently sued Hisense to get its brand back, with Foxconn setting up its own Sharp manufacturing facility in Mexico. 

NBCUniversal said it hired Roku’s Alison Levin as president of Advertising and Partnerships.

The move underscores the importance of streaming at the big media companies.

NBCU also promoted Karen Kovacs to president of client partnerships

Levin, who had been VP of global ad revenue and marketing solutions at Roku, will report to Mark Marshall, global chairman of advertising and partnerships at NBCU.

The hire was one of the first for Marshall since replacing Linda Yaccarino, who left NBCU to become CEO of Twitter.

In her new post, Levin will oversee all advertising sales initiatives across national, local, small- and medium-sized businesses, Peacock, sports, Olympics and Paralympics.

“Alison is extremely well-respected across the advertising ecosystem for her focus on partnership as well as her innovative leadership in the Connected TV and digital ad space,“ Marshall said. “As a pioneer of the shift to data-driven selling, Alison brought instrumental value to the marketplace at large, and I have no doubt her acumen and experience will bring incredible value to our team.”

Roku last week reported an 18% increase in platform revenue, which includes ad sales.

“Karen Kovacs has been essential in the collaboration and growth of our enterprise partnerships with clients, and I could not be more thrilled to have these two talented executives join our broader leadership team in advancing our division forward,” Marshall added.

Kovacs had been executive VP, client partnerships for NBCU’s advertising and partnerships unit. She will also report to Marshall.

Roku surged in after-hours trading Wednesday after the streaming company reported strong third-quarter growth in active accounts, user engagement and revenue, beating equity analysts' forecasts and sending its stock surging over 15% on the Nasdaq in after-hours trading.

Total revenue was up 20% vs. Q3 2022 to $912 million, with "platform" revenue (which is primarily advertising) surging 18% to $786.8 million in the quarter. Device revenue surged, too, by 33% to $125.2 million, although Roku continues to lose money, at least directly, on making streaming pucks, sticks and smart TVs.

But all in all, total revenue soundly beat equity analysts' forecast for total revenue of around $853.2 million.

Active accounts reached 75.8 million, up 2.3 million from the second quarter and 16% year over year. 

Also read: Roku’s Roller Coaster Ride Continues

And hours spent by users globally on the Roku platform were up 22% year over year to 26.7 billion, an increase from 25.1 billion in Q2. 

Roku continues to lose money, however, with net red ink totaling $330.1 million in Q3 vs. a quarterly loss of $122.2 million a year prior. Forecasts called for the company to lose slightly less than that in the third quarter. 

All in all, things seem to be looking a little better for Roku, which has famously tumbled on Wall Street since a share price zenith in the summer of 2021. In short, many investors just don't believe the company has a longterm future in the global TVOS race against Amazon and Google. 

Notably, however, even the more reserved forecasts of equity analysts prior to Wednesday's earnings report showed a resurgence in revenue growth, driven by an improvement in the advertising market. Analyst Craig Moffett, who upgraded Roku from "sell" to "neutral" on Tuesday, published this graphic:

Roku itself isn't quite as bullish about the near-term future, forecasting 10% revenue growth to $955 million for Q4. 

"We had a solid rebound in video ads in Q3 and we expect the YoY growth rate of video ads in Q4 to be similar," the company said in its Q3 letter to shareholders. "However, we remain cautious amid an uncertain macro environment and an uneven ad market recovery. Additionally, we will face difficult YoY growth rate comparisons in content distribution and M&E which will challenge the YoY growth rate of platform revenue in Q4."

Notably, Roku also charmed equity analysts in Q3 by laying off 10% of its workforce, liquidating some of its Silicon Valley real estate and taking down all those short-form shows it purchased from failed startup Quibi two years ago. It took a $62 million write-down in the quarter over the latter. 

Roku remains far from profitable, but there's at least a notion among equity analysts that the company is now on the right path. 

"Despite our concerns about rising competition in Roku's two key revenue segments -- devices and advertising -- we believe that the intensifying focus on achieving real profitability and free cash flow (not just adjusted EBITDA) reduces the risk of the shares from de--rating further. As such, we are upgrading Roku from Sell to Neutral," Moffett wrote in a note to investors Tuesday. 

Trick or treat: Studio71 is delivering more than 250 scary videos and nearly 120 hours of content from creators and influencers to The Roku Channel in time to stream for free for Halloween.

The videos include do-it-yourself spells from Troom Troom, with 23.8 million YouTube subscribers; gaming adventures from FGTeeV (22.5 million YouTubs subs) and creepy challenges from GamingwithKev and GameGrumps (10.9 million and 5.4 million subscribers, respectively).

Other creators delivering spooky content include Adam B, FV Family, GrayStillPlays, JonesGotGame, Leah Ashe, Thoughty2 and Prince Family Clubhouse.

Studio71 had been working to bring its network of creators to new platforms. Over the past year, Studio71 has secured deals with free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channels and ad-supported VOD services including Amazon Freevee and TCL smart TVs.

At the same time, the over-the-top content library from its creator network has expanded by 400%.

On Wednesday, Roku's Nasdaq price cratered once again (more than 7%), after Wells Fargo analyst Steven Cahall lowered his price target for the company citing a soft ad market. 

But while the bears on Wall Street continue to have their way with Roku, Madison Avenue seems OK with the streaming company.

Citing the fact that 38% of all U.S. household streaming is now conducted on the Roku platform, Comscore announced Thursday that ad campaigns on Roku, including those targeting the Roku Channel, have been integrated into the ad tech company’s ”flagship“ cross-platform solution, Comscore Campaign Ratings. 

CCR clients will now be able to quantify the number of people watching Roku content, beyond merely counting households, and they'll be able to measure key audiences within Comscore’s cross-platform, persons-level reporting.

Measuring 62 million ads delivered across six campaigns on Roku, Comscore found that co-viewing delivered a 37% lift in ad exposure.

Advertisers and agencies can assess the incremental impact of Roku within their media plans while also understanding the co-viewing on Roku compared to other platforms.

Comscore is now an approved measurement vendor in Roku’s Measurement Partner Program.

Roku has acquired the exclusive U.S. rights to TV adaptation The Spiderwick Chronicles after Disney Plus dropped the series.

Based on the bestselling book series by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black, the eight-episode TV series, produced by Paramount Television Studios and Disney’s 20th Television, will premiere on the Roku Channel in early 2024.

The adaptation was originally developed and produced for Disney Plus before the subscription streaming service scrapped it in August. The series was then shopped to other buyers earlier this summer before Roku secured the rights.

The Spiderwick Chronicles official description calls it a “coming-of-age story of the Grace Family, as they move from New York to Michigan and into their family’s ancestral home. Upon arrival, the family not only uncovers mysteries hidden inside their great-grandfather’s Spiderwick Estate, but also discovers a secret, fantastical world around them.”

“It is an honor to bring The Spiderwick Chronicles, a spectacular adventure-filled story led by the incredible Christian Slater and Joy Bryant, exclusively to the Roku Channel,” said Brian Tannenbaum, head of originals, Roku Media, in a statement. “We cannot wait to introduce this exquisitely crafted series, imagined by a world-class creative team, to millions of streamers.”

The Spiderwick Chronicles is executive produced by Aron Eli Coleite, who also serves as showrunner alongside Kat Coiro.

Ask a Roku executive about market conditions in Europe, and they're likely to change the subject back to places like Canada and Mexico, where the Roku operating system is well-established. 

But the battle to establish Roku in the EMEA region alongside rival TVOS platforms from Google, Amazon, Samsung and LG is real. And Roku just reported a victory, announcing that its software platform will power JVC-branded smart TVs in Europe sold at 288 Currys stores. 

Currys licenses the JVC brand from JVCKenwood and has its own factory arrangements to manufacture smart TVs under that moniker. 

It's Roku-powered sets will target the low end of the market, arriving with 720p and 1080p HD resolution capabilities and 24- to 43-inch screen size configurations. Prices will start at  £169.99 (around $209).

“The Roku OS delivers a smart TV experience like no other, with features that make it easier, faster, and more affordable for consumers to watch what they love,” said Bart Bomers, VP the Europe, Middle East and Africa region at Roku. “It is not without reason that Roku is the No. 1 TV streaming platform by hours streamed in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, and our partnership with Currys extends our commitment to bringing our popular platform to more people in the UK.”

Spotify and Roku said they are bringing video ads to the Spotify app on the Roku platform.

The Spotify app has been available on Roku devices for more than a decade. 

Roku will be offering Spotify video inventory as part of the Roku Audience Network and it will be available as part of Spotify’s Video Everywhere ad offering.

Spotify's Video Takeover ad experience, which reaches users streaming music across mobile, tablet, and desktop devices, will soon include CTV devices, beginning with the Roku platform. In the future, more video ad products, such as video podcast ads, will be added to this offering.

Also Read: Roku Touts Ways To Reach Its Streaming Consumers

For Spotify, the arrangement increases the ability for brands to reach Spotify users with more impactful messages.

“As a longtime leader in the streaming space, we’ve had a front-row seat to audiences choosing streaming to enjoy content and advertisers following suit to reach them,“ Spotify global head of advertising & business platform Lee Brown said. “It’s long been our goal to make Spotify available to anyone on any device and this partnership with Roku answers the call from advertisers who want even more ways to reach our users. Both our brands have been at the forefront of the streaming revolution and together we’re continuing to invest in more opportunities for advertisers to connect with our immersed users.”

Spotify is also in the process of launching a Spotify CTV Partner Network.

“As longtime partners, we’re excited to launch Spotify’s TV streaming video ads that will reach both of our streamers on platform and drive measurable campaign impact for brands,” said Alison Levin, VP, ad revenue and marketing solutions at Roku. “Roku and Spotify are uniquely positioned to make the largest screen in the home work harder for brands. We are thrilled to partner with Spotify on this at launch.”

One equity analyst recently told us that "Roku's strategic position is weakening, actually dramatically," as "the three largest tech companies in the world, alongside the biggest TV manufacturers in the world, mostly compete against Roku and take more share every quarter."

Roku's stock price stands a merely a fraction of its peak valuation 26 months ago. And the only time Roku seems to please The Street these days is when it cuts cost, like this earlier this week, when Roku only momentarily raised its share price by announcing that it was cutting employees and shows. 

Still, according to Beachfront Marketplace, a sell-side ad platform (SSP) enabling programmatic buying and selling of premium TV, nearly 40% of the connected TV ad impressions the company arbitrated in the first six months of 2023 were on the Roku TVOS. 

That was nearly as much as the combined impressions delivered by Amazon Fire TV, Samsung and pay TV set-top boxes. 

In addition to conducting its second round of layoffs in the last six months and closing some of its regional offices, Roku also announced that it's pulling 35 shows off its FAST, the Roku Channel, to save on royalties, taxes and other expenses. 

The programming exodus is replete with shows it acquired in a $100 million fire sale held by Quibi in May 2021, just after Jeffrey Katzenberg's ill-fated mobile-first streaming service waived the white flag.

Those include Most Dangerous Game, starring Christopher Waltz, and Wireless, another thriller starring Tye Sheridan. 

But there other notable refugees, including off-Comedy Central reruns of Reno 911!. (The full list is below.)

Roku shares spiked around 10% in the immediate aftermath of the cuts on Wednesday, which the company attributed to a slowdown in ad sales. However, by end-of-day trading on Thursday, they descended to the point of being virtually flat with pre-announcement trading. 

Here's that list:

About Face
The Andy Cohen Diaries
Barkitecture
Benedict Men
Big Rad Wolf
Cup of Joe
Dishmantled
Dummy
Elba vs. Block
Eye Candy
Fierce Queens
The Fugitive
Gayme Show
Gone Mental with Lior
Iron Sharpens Iron
Let’s Roll With Tony Greenhand
Memory Hole
Most Dangerous Game
Moving the Needle With Dr. Woo
Murder House Flip
Murder Unboxed
The Newsreader
Nice One!
Panhandle
Reno 911!
Run This City
The Sauce
Singled OutSlip
Squeaky Clean
The Stranger
Surprise We’re Pregnant
Survive
Wireless
You Ain’t Got These

Roku said it will lay off 10% of its staff in a new round of cost-cutting.

In addition to reducing headcount, Roku said it will cut expenses by consolidating office space, reducing outside services expenses and limiting new hires.

The streaming company also said it will be conducting a strategic review of its content portfolio. Like other media companies, it plans to remove content now available on its streaming platforms.

Roku previously laid off 200 staffers in March, about 6% of its headcount. The new round of layoffs is expected to be completed by the end of the year.

Also Read: Roku Shares Surge on 11% Q2 Revenue Spike

Roku said it expects to take an impairment charge of $160 million to $200 million related to its decision to stop using certain office facilities. 

The company will also take a charge of $55 million to $65 million in connection with removing licensed and produced content from its streaming platform.

In addition, there will also be a charge of $45 million to $65 million in connection with the staff layoffs, including severance and benefits.

Also Read: Roku’s Chris Larson: ‘We Spend Roughly $1 Billion a Year on R&D. It's Taken Us 15 Years to Get Here. To Say You're Going To Spend $200 Million and Catch That in 6 Months Is a Lot of Bravado’

Excluding the restructuring and impairment charges, Roku said it expects third-quarter revenue to be between $835 million and $875 million with an adjusted EBITDA loss of $20 million to $40 million.

A year ago in Q3, Roku reported revenue of $761 million and a loss in adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) of $34.4 million.

 The cuts should translate into higher earnings in 2024, Wells Fargo analyst Steven Cahall said.

“We think implied adjusted EBITDA could exceed $300 million for ‘24,” Cahall said.

You know right away that you're talking to a serious gadget aficionado when he tells you that during the DVD era of the aughts, his living room was powered by Crestron pro AV equipment. 

But even Chris Larson, the man who led TCL's invasion of the U.S. smart TV market in the middle part of the last decade, and who is now in charge of Roku's global TV push as VP of retail strategy, has his technological limitations. 

"Every time I wanted to add a new piece of equipment to my AV system, I'd have to have that Crestron guy come back out and program it in for me," he told Next TV over Zoom on a hot late-August morning from his home in Orange County, Calif. 

Perhaps it was frustrating consumer experiences like this one that forged Larson into the captain of consumer electronics industry he is today, foisting software and hardware that is easier for laymen to use and cheaper for manufacturing partners to build. 

Whatever forged this dude, he has a unique perspective and insight on what the global living room of the future will look like ... and how it will be supplied. It was one interesting talk. Here's a transcript of our half-hour discussion:

Daniel Frankel: So I don’t know if you recall, but we’ve intersected before. You were on the Next TV “Watch List” back in 2020. Boy, your life must have changed. Could you even go outside for a cup of coffee in Orange County without being mobbed?

Chris Larson: Well, the paparazzi did get overwhelming. 

Daniel: So you’ve been there from the beginning, Chris. You were the North American honcho at TCL in 2017 when it partnered with Roku to take over the continent. 

Chris: It was August of 2014, that was the first step for Roku TVs. Both TCL and Hisense launched on that day in August of 2014. 

Daniel: What was the “secret sauce” that made those partnerships work?

Chris: It was a perfect marriage. The strengths of TCL and Hisense were that they were really good at hardware, but really not very good at software. And Roku was really good at software, and didn't have as much experience in hardware. So they were really perfect matches. Since then, both TCL and Hisense have added a lot of software capabilities. And at the same time, Roku has added an awful lot of hardware capabilities. I don't think it's quite as Yin and Yang as it as it was in 2014. I think there's a lot of common strengths across both the hardware manufacturers and us as an OEM supporter.

Daniel: So it’s been about six months since Roku’s branded TVs hit retail shelves. How are sales going?

Chris: We're really happy with the way the business has performed. Our momentum grows, day after day, week, after week, month after month. So you know, we're growing about the rate we expected. You talk about separating our OEM program from our Roku branded. We don't quite look at them that separated. We think they're very complimentary. And a lot of the initiatives for Roku branded are designed to kind of lift the tide for all boats in that Roku TV harbor. Some of the innovation we're developing around the manufacturability, the cost of the platform, some of the tuning that we're able to do, some of the optimization between hardware and software … Those are things that will benefit our Roku TV program, mid in long term as well.

Also read: Anthony Wood: Roku Will Run Down the Android ‘Phone OS’ Internationally With ‘Purpose-Built’ Streaming Software

Daniel: You’ve answered this before, but I’ll ask again: What does having you’re own branded TVs do for Roku?

Chris: As we kind of outlined for you back in December, we actually developed the reference design for these TVs. We create the recipe that our manufacturing partners execute against. And again, by having deeper relationships with the component manufacturers, whether that be the Open Cell LCD guys, whether that be the SOC [system on a chip] guys, the memory, how those things are managed on a main board … Those are all things that we can make some significant inroads in now that we have those direct relationships. We don't want to shift from an OEM model to a first-party or a Roku-branded model. We want that to be incremental, accretive, you know. The belief is a that all TV will be streamed. And so assuming that that means all TVs are going to have to have an OS. And it’s just not practical to maintain the dozens of operating systems that exist today in the TV space, particularly when you look at the consolidation that has to happen on the content level. So there has to be consolidation among the OS [providers], which means we just have to get bigger and bigger. You know, if you look at what Microsoft's done with Windows, while they have their own first-party devices, they license out the Windows OS to everything from a cheap entry-level computers up to super-premium desktop editing and gaming machines. So there's room for all different levels and consumer choices. We're gonna design Roku branded TVs for how we see the ideal unadulterated Roku experience unfolding. But some of our manufacturing partners may want to go super premium. If you think of an OLED that we're not currently supporting, but we do have a reference design. So our OEM partners can take that premium position, while others might want to take a more entry-level position and not put the kind of memory or the kind of functionality that we might put in there, whether it be a Bluetooth module or a multi-speaker audio system, things that add true BOM [bills of materials] costs, but we believe also add a better consumer experience. So that'll be no different than the rest of the TV business where the customer just wants choices, and we shouldn't force everybody into into the same choice.

Daniel: There’s a lot to unpack there. I’m going to pull out the part about OS consolidation. I know your CEO, Anthony Wood, has said TVOS will consolidate into just a handful of major suppliers over the coming years. 

Chris: Yeah, I think the OS has become much more than just simply adding apps to a TV, which is what we once thought it was. When you think of the intersections with even a single content provider, like a Paramount Plus, for example, where they have an app on our platform, like every other content provider, but we also integrate their content into many different places within many different places within the Roku Channel. How do we get people to that content? It's not as simple as just adding an app to the TV to provide that great customer experience. So being able to connect to our advertisers, being able to connect to the different functions the consumer would want, things like shoppable ads, are not easy to do. Roku spends roughly a billion dollars a year on research and development to do all these things. And it's taken us 15 years to get here. For someone to say I'm going to invest $200 million dollars and and catch that in the next six months is, quite frankly, kind of kind of a lot of bravado. If it could be done, you'd have to think that we have among the stupidest people in the industry on our books. And I don't think we do. We have the best the industry has to offer, both on the hardware side and the software side.

Daniel: You say this as newcomers like Xperi/TiVo and Comcast/Xumo run headlong into the global TVOS market.

Chris: Frankly, we're the only OS purpose-built for TV. So even if you took Android, which is a great software, but it's made for a mobile device, so it's made to have access to more memory access to more clock cycles … It's engineered in a different way than Roku OS. And the TV business is a very cost-sensitive business. So if I had to put an extra, you know, $4 worth of memory in there, that can be the difference of a $10 retail price difference. And with TVs, you know, you've been at this long enough to know that these are very price-sensitive. Ten dollars can be the life the difference between success and failure in a small screen size.

Daniel: You mentioned the barrier to entry prospective TVOS providers face. But how does a company like Roku, which has specialized in software and HDMI streaming pucks, dongles and sticks to date, just simply start up a branded TV business?

Chris: Yeah, without, you know, ripping all the curtains off of the House of Oz, there's a handful of panel factories in the world. There’s a handful of SOC suppliers. And frankly, there's only two handful of factories total. So most of the brands are manufactured by one of these factories. We do business with 13 of the major factories around the world that build Roku TVs for our OEM partners. Most brands are manufactured by a third party. So there's no reason we can't be that third party we've been. We've been working in that business since 2013. And understanding how the factory process works in designing those reference boards, and spinning out those boards, and maintaining the software at the same time ... So our experience actually goes back to 2013. With product development, the only difference is the sticker that goes on the front, and what choices we make when when developing the product. So you know, people buy a solution to their problems. So if you look at what Roku is able to do with a very attainable BOM cost device, like TCL 6 Series or a Roku Plus Series, those are just amazing devices for the BOM cost. Because we're able to do such unique things with them in the software space, that we really don't have to put the kind of hardware costs in that some of our competitors would have to. And we also have the experts on staff that know how to manage picture quality and manage audio quality. So where most OEM brands have to rely on the SOC provider to do that, Roku is actually in the catbird seat — we’re able to optimize the BOM on all components of the television.

Daniel: So you’re able to drive down the cost by getting more closely involved in the manufacturing process? I know, I'm super good at Captain Obvious questions. 

Chris: Yeah, so a real easy example is the timing connector, the T-con board. That’s in just about all the TVs. Since the beginning of LCD, everybody's used the same timing connector, which is basically the controller in between the mainboard and the Open Cell panel. And it's easy for a manufacturer because if they want to buy a panel from BOE, and a panel from CSOT, or a panel from HKC -- they can pit those three factories against each other to buy the same 65-inch panel. And they all have the same input. So from a convenience of assembly [perspective] and convenience of the supply chain, it gives them a lot of negotiating power, because these panels are interchangeable. But what if we could take out that T-con board and run that same functionality on an SOC that's capable of it. So now we eliminate this extra board, we eliminate the cables going in and out of that. That allows us to save some cost,  a couple dollars we'll call it. But it also means that manufacturability is much simpler, because now you just have one cable instead of four cable on each end. And you eliminate those connectors, which tend to be the most problematic part of electronics. So we're making a TV that has the same functionality. And by partnering with the panel people and saying, ‘Hey, look, Roku is half of the U.S. volume in the TV space. So you make half your panels for the U.S. market in this way,' we can save costs and we can increase reliability. And we can make a TV that the customer appreciates just as well, and one that lasts a little longer. So I think that's the kind of innovation that we're really looking for. Because if I'm a broad-market TV producer, we'll say I'm a TCL, I want to make as many common components as possible to push my business forward, because I know I have to support multiple operating systems, I know I have to support multiple frame rates, I know I have to support multiple cosmetics. Because what Americans like versus what Europe likes versus what Asia likes aren't all the same. So all of those compromises mean the most similar components, and each step is the best for them. For us, it's not. It's rethinking from the ground up. Our TV could be produced now at scale using what we know today. So a lot less is being bound by the legacy of TV design.

Daniel: So, it’s a statement that Roku believes its engineering is better?

Chris: It’s more about self-interest than bragging. You know, a TCL engineer could figure out how to eliminate a T-con just as easily as we could. It's just not in their best interest to do that. And that's just on the product side. On the marketing side, or how we speak to consumers, Roku branded also has significant advantages. And I can tell you from sitting in a prior chair where I wanted my brand to come out forward. I sold it as a TV including Roku, which means I just didn't have the kind of real estate to offer Roku to tell the full story. With Roku branded, we really have that ability to tell the full Roku story. And again, we believe that once the customer understands what these devices are capable of, what kind of delight we can add to their lives. Whether they buy our branded product or they decide to buy a more premium tech stack on the display side, or they want to save some money and their budget pushes them into something without quite all the all the bells and whistles, we're fine with any three of those.

Daniel: Like Amazon with its branded TVs, Roku has said it wants to expand the scope of what consumers think the TV is capable of. How do you see that happening?

Chris: I think we just started dipping our toe in the water with that. We can show your cameras on your TV, or your doorbell on your TV. You can control your lights from your TV. But in the future, AI and some of the things that machine learning can can bring to the party, along with having kind of this app store … that’s exciting. There may be a day that on Halloween, you tell your home you want the Halloween solution, and your TV will be Halloween themed, your home lighting will be Halloween themed, your doorbell ring will be a scary song … you can think of all the things that we can do once we apply this software within your home. So yeah, we really believe that in the in the future, regular people should be able to use a smart home.

Daniel: The branded TV thing can’t be easy on your OEM relationships. 

Chris: I won't kid you, change is always scary for both Roku and our OEM partners. But I think now that they've had a little taste for last six months of how we're doing  and what we're doing and why, we really had a great revival in relationships. We just had the TCL chairman in our office last week, and we've got their CTO in there this week. So the relationships are strong, I believe. And I think as we start delivering things to them that make their business easier, better and more profitable, they'll only grow in appreciation for what we're trying to achieve.

In a sleek screening room at the NFL’s massive West Coast headquarters next to $5 billion SoFi Stadium, where the league’s Los Angeles Rams and Chargers play, a feature-length documentary unspooled this week that represents the latest push by Roku to get into both sports and original programming. 

That 97-minute documentary, NFL Draft: The Pick Is In, debuted Friday night on the Roku Channel, Roku’s in-house, ad-supported channel that includes an increasing number of its own original shows. 

At the screening, Rich Eisen, the NFL Network’s public face, called the doc “a major milestone for the Roku Channel.” Eisen is also the host of another new Roku original, a five-days-a-week talk show focused on the league. 

Eisen has anchored the NFL Network’s own coverage of the draft for most of the channel’s 20-year existence. A documentary about the 2023 draft, held in April and released less than two weeks before the regular season debuts, was a natural for everyone involved, he said.

“It’s the only event on the calendar where the main decision makers are not there,” said Eisen, who appears in several amusing behind-the-scenes moments in the doc. “It’s an off-season Super Bowl.”

Not surprising, then, that the NFL’s annual parity-inducing prospect-distribution system has spawned numerous previous films, both scripted and documentaries, from Draft Day with Kevin Costner and Chadwick Bozeman, on down.

The Pick Is In was well backed – the league’s NFL Films and the sports division of David Ellison’s Skydance Entertainment produced it -- and takes an equally well-funded approach to the events it’s covering. Camera teams were embedded with four franchises, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, a CAA agent representing two top defensive prospects, other players, and executives. 

The Pick Is In doesn’t break much new ground compared to its predecessors, other than the particular dramas of this year’s process. 

But after answering which top quarterback won’t be among the first 20 picks, and what happens when one of the agent’s clients slides a bit in the draft order, the doc mines real emotional gold from the late-round fate of one diminutive Kansas State running back. 

Deuce Staley had an extraordinary college career, despite being only 5’5” tall, with more than 5,000 yards combined rushing and receiving. The drama comes not just from Staley’s outsized college career, but the fact that his father, Will, is a Dallas Cowboys college-scouting executive. The outcome of a sixth-round pick in the draft’s third day has seldom carried as much emotional freight for disinterested onlookers. 

That’s quite an achievement, especially considering the draft is, as one participant put it, “a broadcast that’s essentially just a reading of names off pieces of paper.” 

Bigger Than a Sheet of Names For Roku

Roku Media Head of Content David Eilenberg said The Pick Is In is one of “about 30” original series and features created for the Roku Channel this year, and the channel’s first feature-length documentary original. 

Roku has been slowly building its originals offerings across a range of genres since 2021, when it spent $75 million on the programming library left when billion-dollar startup Quibi spectacularly crashed. Other Roku originals right now include the reality spinoff The Great American Baking Show and a Jessica Alba-hosted and -produced show on home renovations. 

“We’re trying a bunch of genres in general entertainment,” Eilenberg said, though he, like other Roku executives, declined to specify the company’s originals budget. “In this case, (The Pick Is In) gives people a new vantage on something that’s become a sports obsession.”

The NFL draft absolutely isn’t NFL live game broadcasts, which are overwhelmingly the most watched programming on broadcast and cable television. But the draft too has become something that resonates with many viewers, Eilenberg speculated, because of the huge interest in fantasy football leagues, which are all conducting this season’s team drafts right about now. 

Roku, meanwhile, is “looking at sports in a few different ways,” Eilenberg said. “We’re approaching it as a platform, not (just) with content, but as a tool.”

That tool is the Sports Zone, which functions as an interface within the general Roku interface, with programming from across the Roku universe. Eilenberg called it a “genre-specific sub-home menu,” created when Roku executives realized how many sports events and related programming were being watched on its platform. 

A recent Roku-commissioned survey found that 56% of streaming-video users watched live sports on their TV, and more than a quarter of those had missed games because their cable package didn’t include the match. 

The Sports Zone is one way to fight that fragmentation. Other streaming services – Apple TV Plus, Peacock, Paramount Plus – have added a Sports tab in their menu of offerings as they carry more and more live events. 

Roku, like Apple TV, has the benefit of being a “marketplace,” providing a more comprehensive set of viewing options than just their own shows, in Roku’s case including sports from CBS and Paramount Plus, Eilenberg said. 

In June, Roku made a splashy headline when it acquired a piece of the North American TV rights to Europe's Formula E racing league. But Roku isn’t directly competing with Fox Sports 1, ESPN, NBC Sports, Warner Bros. Discovery’s TNT and TBS and other possessors of pricey live-game rights. 

“Our position, as with all our content, is the same as with all our channels, which is that it’s free and ad supported,” Eilenberg said. “That makes us distinct from the others.” 

He also suggested Roku’s method of reaching a wide audience echoes decades of free, ad-supported sports viewing experiences on broadcast TV. 

“People are going to be going through us to get to sports,” Eilenberg said. 

Sports not only attracts viewers, “it also draws interest from advertisers,” Eilenberg said. “No genre of content is more enticing. It’s not just the Big Four (pro sports leagues) with advertisers either. Women’s sports is huge now.” 

Accordingly there’s not only a sports “genre-specific sub-menu,” but what can only called a sub-sub menu for women’s sports, fueled by interest in World Cup soccer, the WNBA, and other female-focused leagues and sports. 

Eilenberg was hesitant to predict where Roku’s sports forays will head next. Understandable, given the many, many questions hanging over the industry, as legacy cable and broadcast wither, streaming economic models aren’t scaling, and TV rights have skyrocketed.

Among the headlines of just the past couple of weeks are speculation that ESPN will partner with Apple or Amazon (the latter reportedly more likely). Separately, Amazon said in its upcoming second season of Thursday Night Football that it will deploy artificial intelligence tools to enhance its NFL coverage this year. Amazon also said Nielsen will incorporate its first-party game viewership data in its ratings, which were 18% higher than Nielsen’s own. 

Apple has seen its modest Major League Soccer investment, $250 million a year for nearly all broadcast rights for a decade, blossom with the mid-season arrival in Miami of all-time great Lionel Messi. The 36-year-old global soccer star will not only be paid a boatload of money by David Beckham-owned Inter Miami, he’ll get a share of Apple TV Plus league subscription revenues. 

But whither Roku remains a question for many outside observers, with or without sports documentaries. 

Analyst Michael Nathanson said in a report after the most recent earnings that his firm remains” cautious about Roku’s ability to see sustained growth amid the rising competition in CTV advertising and devices ... We reiterate our Underperform rating.” 

As Nathanson pointed out, though Roku ad revenues were down for the first half of the year, its stock price is “humming along, up over +120% year-to-date (vs. +17.6% YTD for S&P500)!” Continuing that blistering pace of share-price growth will be challenging. 

More sports programming may help with ad revenues, by attracting or retaining more viewers. The programming also could differentiate the Roku Channel from not-very-different aggregator channels carried by competitors such as Tubi, Pluto, and TV OEMs such as Samsung and Vizio. 

“Longer term, we remain concerned about Roku’s ability to sustain outsized revenue growth and generate meaningful levels of profitability,” Nathanson wrote. 

That’s a reasonable concern about a company largely confined to the relatively static U.S. market, with mammoth competitors such as Alphabet, Amazon and Apple. Longer term, then, Roku must hope that it, like the undersized Deuce Staley in The Pick Is In, can still be a top pick when viewers draft their next viewing experiences. 

NBCUniversal and Roku are partnering to bring new FAST channels themed around classic TV titles to the Roku Channel.

Starting Tuesday, Roku Channel users will have access to channels including Murder, She Wrote, Little House on the Prairie, Saved By the Bell and Bad Girls Club. 

Also read: The Roku Channel Gathers 1.1% Share of Viewing in May

Additional NBCU channels arriving Tuesday include TNBC (Teen NBC), which features adolescent-themed shows like Punky Brewster; and Universal Crime, which will host a library of mysterious and suspenseful legacy content including The Rockford Files.

NBCU plans to launch additional channels Universal Action and Alfred Hitchcock Presents in partnership with Roku later this year.

The two companies previously brought NBC News Now, Dateline 24/7, Today All Day, LX, NBC local channels, Telemundo regional news channels, Sky News International, and The Rotten Tomatoes Channel to the Roku Channel as part of the same partnership.

Also read: Roku Channel Expands NBCU News Lineup

Roku has seen success with some of its other FAST channels, including MotorTrend, a which reportedly generated over 10 million hours of ad-supported streaming earlier this summer.

The Roku Channel currently features more than 80,000 free movies and programs, and more than 350 free live linear television channels from more than 250 partners.

According to Nielsen, the Roku Channel accounted for 1.1% of total U.S. TV viewing for the month of May. 

“As FAST continues to gain incredible popularity in the marketplace, we’re excited to bring such terrific content options -- including a strong roster of very well-known, fan-favorite programming -- to our viewers," said Jennifer Vaux, VP of content acquisition and programming for Roku.

Viewers hoping to watch can stream on a Roku device, a competing smart TV, or at The Roku Channel’s webpage.