Here’s How Connected TV Platforms Are Expanding Their User Bases

After a year of unprecedented growth in the connected TV space, the industry’s top players are flush with more users than ever. But the real battle is far from over, and connected TV platforms need to figure out the best way to keep those customers coming back. Streaming hours on connected TV exploded during the pandemic, accelerating an already existing trend and creating new opportunities for advertisers. Amazon Fire TV reported 50 million monthly active users in Dec. 2020, a 25% increase from January of that year, while Roku had 55.1 million active accounts as of the second quarter of 2021, 28% year-over-year growth. In the second quarter, Vizio SmartCast accounts jumped 43% year over year to hit 14 million, and streaming hours climbed 22% to reach 3.5 billion. Advertising spend is growing alongside CTV's reach. Overall, CTV is expected to see nearly $6 billion in 2022 upfront dollars, up from $4.5 billion in 2021, eMarketer predicts. Those predictions are great news for companies like Roku, Amazon Fire TV and Vizio, all of which are racing not only to keep existing customers but to rapidly expand their user bases. But there's no one-size-fits-all approach to bringing customers onto their platforms, and the companies are focusing on bulking up their content offerings as well as updating their interfaces to keep customers coming back. “I think there's probably three or four different avenues where we're looking to grow and then increase engagement,” Tedd Cittadine, vp of content partnerships, told Adweek. "Covid was a benefit to our business, but it is by no means replacing the long-term, secular trends of streaming." Former Quibi Shows, Rebranded as Roku Originals, Will Debut May 20 on Roku All about the content Now that Roku has more than 55 million active users, the platform is rethinking its content strategy to keep that figure growing. The focus isn't just to “get new users on the Roku platform," Cittadine explained— it's to "increase engagement across all of our user base." Must-see content is one approach the company is pursuing to accomplish that. Roku launched Roku Originals in May built out of programming from the now-defunct Quibi, and earlier this month debuted 23 more former Quibi series under the Roku Originals banner. So far, it's paying off: in the first 60 days following their premiere on the Roku Channel, the top five most-watched TV programs on the AVOD were all Roku Originals. In the month of June, the AVOD was the sixth most-streamed channel by household reach, behind Netflix at No. 1, followed by YouTube, Amazon, Hulu and Disney+, according to Nielsen figures. The Roku Channel is currently reaching households with approximately 70 million people, and the channel more than doubled its streaming hours year-over-year. “As we transition users to getting on the platform and discovering great content, AVOD or advertiser-supported free content is such a big opportunity," said Cittadine. "We fill a very needed void in the market with free content, and that service has been very, very successful at engaging users and giving consumers exactly what they want.” Roku thinks of free programming as the second stop for consumers after getting them acquainted with Roku as a platform. “That's really the kind of the life cycle of how we're looking to get users first introduced to Roku, then to get them engaged and then to offer them this very compelling, free content advertising supported experience through The Roku Channel," Cittadine said. Roku isn't the only company looking at originals as a draw. Amazon Fire TV isn't investing in originals directly, but fellow Amazon-owned AVOD service IMDb TV, which is heavily promoted within the Fire TV interface, is, with 12 upcoming original series, including a new half-hour drama from Dick Wolf and a Judge Judy Sheindlin-led courtroom show in the works. Amazon Fire TV has also found particular resonance with live content, and live sports content in particular. “We've got the Live tab where we just continue to integrate more and more partners,” said Charlotte Maines, director of Fire TV advertising, monetization and engagement. “That's the easiest way to get into a marquee live event, like when Showtime has a big fight or of course Thursday Night Football. We're really finding that live is driving a lot of traffic and engagement.” Sports have also been a high point for other connected TV platforms to keep and engage viewers, with both Amazon and Roku pointing to the particular appeal of the Tokyo Olympic Games that helped bring in eyeballs. "With sports, in particular, we've seen in the last year a significant shift to streaming in that category alone," Cittadine said. Building a better UI While content rules the roost, there's no use watching it if the user experience drives customers away. That's why Amazon Fire TV is busy focusing on enhancing the user experience through a new interface designed to make it even easier for consumers to access content. The new UI includes a revamped home screen experience with a new main menu that contains a single destination to access experiences like Find, Live TV and Library. Fire TV said the interface is paramount for customers to find content and stay active on the platform. “We're really continuing to see a lot of great engagement from customers throughout the user interface,” Maines said. The new UI also comes with other benefits in the form of targeted advertising, and has provided Amazon Fire TV with an additional suite of display advertising services, such as a feature rotator and a screensaver, a full screen-sized ad placement, as well as sponsored tiles and sponsored content rows. Smart TV company Vizio, which went public in March, is also working to keep its viewers engaged by unveiling an updated experience for its free streaming video service WatchFree+. Earlier this month, the platform rolled out a new programming guide and advanced its user experience. A data-driven approach Vizio finds that improving the customer experience goes hand-in-hand with the leveraging of customer data, and the platform providing a personalized experience on its SmartCast hub that gets viewers custom recommendations and improves their advertising experience. “When we first think about our role in terms of growing audiences, growing streaming hours, growing programming, all of that to us really comes back to being a data-driven organization,” Adam Bergman, vp of national ad sales, told Adweek. “Your experience on a Vizio television is distinct because the programs you watch, the content you engage with, that now informs the way we deliver you content, the way we deliver programming and the way we deliver advertising.” Vizio recently rolled out a customer curated channel offering on WatchFree+, alongside a new featured category with seasonal programming, themed collections and pop-up channels like the culinary and travel channel Fork & Flight. “That's been a huge area of focus for some time,” Bergman said. “How do you break down these silos of content living in different services and apps, how do we curate something that's specific to our audience? This is the first of many curated channels.” To create an even more personalized experience, Vizio unveiled a data-informed programming arm, Vizio Features, during its NewFronts presentation. The offering pairs together Vizio’s first-party viewership data distribution and targeting capabilities with mainstream and emerging content partners. “It's inspiring us to charge ahead and continue licensing content that we believe is uniquely of interest to our audience, and that comes back to our data,” said Bergman. “We know more about what our customers watch than anybody in market, so the ability to turn around and program uniquely for them is really what Vizio Features is all about.” Amazon Focuses on Reinventing Broadcast TV During First-Ever NewFronts