How Marketers Differentiate Ad-Supported Streaming Platforms, From Roku to Tubi

It’s been a banner year for the streaming video ecosystem, particularly for ad-supported platforms that are getting acquired and netting bigger audiences every month. As the advertising community works out how to best leverage the growing number of platforms, marketers are beginning to notice that—like linear networks—there are differences between the audiences that each one serves. According to interviews with several media buyers and advertisers, few ad-supported platforms are big enough yet to deliver the broad audience buys that television is known for—but they’re growing fast. While investments often hinge on individual clients’ goals, hypotheses about the usefulness of these platforms are being tested and confirmed in real time as audience growth encourages even more spending. “The last 24 months we’ve seen a lot more acceleration and confidence in these channels,” said Rachel Hirschl, svp of digital investments at the marketing agency Lockard and Wechsler Direct. "Since Covid hit, the rest is history. We are seeing everyone really take off, and we are getting some solid measurement components to campaigns that can help with proof points and proof-of-concept for our clients." Audience growth on most ad-supported platforms hasn’t matched the same audience scale of linear, with a few notable exceptions. For Hirschl, Hulu’s ad-supported tier and Roku both can deliver on broader awareness-based marketing efforts across streaming. It's simple calculus: “When we’re looking at broad awareness plays, we have to play with the larger deliverers of impressions at scale, so that’s Hulu or Roku,” she said. Hirschl uses mid-tier AVODs like Pluto (which has 28.4 million monthly active users) and Tubi (which has 33 million monthly actives) more for complementary and incremental buys, because they can deliver big audiences that are unreachable on traditional television. (They can also sometimes be used for more targeted audience plays, Hirschl said.) That’s made easier because of their numerous audience-based levers and attractive price points. AMC Networks Starts AVOD Push by Featuring Shows Like The Walking Dead Free on Pluto TV “When we start to look at the key AVOD partners that we work with, like Tubi and Pluto, when we’re planning, it’s really to complement or to offset where we potentially run into preemption issues,” Hirschl explained. “We know that through those channels, we can carve out our audience very granularly, so if we want to complement a linear program or enhance a larger-scale video play, we’ll use those channels.” New, younger and tech-savvy audiences AVODs like Tubi and Pluto are particularly useful for finding new audiences, and the lack of duplication has proven more promising than expected, said one television executive who has experience working with multiple AVOD services. “We’re seeing almost no duplication,” the exec said. “It is really a different audience, and that is so exciting.” With targeted buys, AVOD buys often end up looking more like ones deployed across Instagram and Twitter. “We almost think about the campaigns and the setup similar to how an agency might think about social,” Hirschl said. “We are really able to break out criteria so we can pull those levers and optimize with measurable results.” Pulling those levers means advertisers are beginning to notice slight differences about the audiences of each platform. Some ad-supported platforms, like Samsung’s free platform Samsung TV Plus, skew more female in the audience they can deliver, while Pluto TV has a slightly more male bent, on average, according to the television executive. ViacomCBS Touts Pluto TV Gains, Will Shutter a Smaller Streaming Service There are also differences around watch time. On Pluto TV, “length of time viewed matched and even exceeded linear,” the TV executive said. “Once people start watching, they don’t stop, and even though the audiences are smaller and you have a smaller base, it suggests a binge habit—whereas in linear you don’t see that as much anymore." There are some commonalities that shouldn’t come as a surprise: Users of streaming services and viewing on connected TV devices often over-index in younger demos, like adults 25-44, or 25-34; free services are often able to reach households in different income brackets than traditional pay TV. But even that is beginning to change. “The older consumer who may be less tech fluent, who maybe hadn’t installed their Roku stick or set up Chromecast, is starting to figure that out,” said Jed Meyer, managing director for North America at the independent media and marketing consultancy Ebiquity. “That has broadened the potential audience.” Some advertisers said they consider original content when deciding where to invest, which may be why Amazon-owned streamer IMDb TV is investing in a slate of original programming including new shows from longtime television judge Judy Sheindlin. “It’s a differentiator in the consumer’s mind, which is a nice differentiator for the brand, if they like this kind of content and want to be associated with it,” Meyer said. Confusion for buyers But the growth in ad-supported streaming has also brought with it more audience fragmentation and plenty of confusion on the buying side—made even more complicated by overlap as many AVOD services get absorbed into bigger media operations. That confusion is particularly evident on network-specific streaming outcroppings, like standalone AVOD apps, where inventory is often sold in multiple ways and programming may live on both ad-supported apps and subscription services, Hirschl said. Those smaller channels, though, can also be attractive to advertisers who want a lot of control over the types of content their ads are running against. Woe betide the media company that puts the kibosh on those platforms—often, buyers and planners may buy direct through those platforms instead of going through a larger media operation for a reason. “Being able to really dig in and understand what inventory we’re running on—it helps us to really have faith in the inventory that we’re getting,” Hirschl said. READ NEXT: Entertainment Giants Reevaluate Their Smaller Streaming Services