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When Roku entered the NewFronts in 2021, marketers got the first look at what Roku Originals might look like.
Fast forward a year, Roku Originals are now one of the more powerful tools in the company’s arsenal, helping drive new users and launching The Roku Channel to a top five channel on the Roku platform in the U.S. in both reach and engagement.
The company highlighted The Roku Channel, the Roku Brand Studio and its advertising platform OneView during Roku’s first in-person NewFronts presentation Tuesday afternoon at Chelsea Factory in New York.
“It has been a phenomenal success. Today we offer more than 70,000 free titles. And as of the end of last year, we have more people age 18-49 than networks like HBO, Cartoon Network or Animal Planet on traditional TV. And get this, it’s now a top five streaming service on the Roku platform,” said Roku vp of programming Rob Holmes during the presentation.
All originals, all the time
Originals took front and center, with Holmes highlighting the company’s recent Lionsgate theatrical deal, and multiple upcoming shows, including a teaser for the highly anticipated biopic Weird: The Al Yankovic Story starring Daniel Radcliffe and Evan Rachel Wood.
The company inked co-production deals with Marquee Brands and Milk Street Studios for seven new original series with Martha Stewart, Emeril Lagasse and Christopher Kimball for The Roku Channel. The deals will bring complete past seasons of the stars’ series to The Roku Channel.
Stewart will have three new shows, and appeared during the presentation to announce Martha Cooks, Martha’s Garden and Martha’s Holidays.
Lagasse and Kimball joined Stewart on stage to announce their series: Emeril Cooks, Emeril Tailgates, Milk Street’s Cooking School and Milk Street’s My Family Recipes.
Continuing with the cooking theme, The Great American Baking Show will now be exclusive to Roku, as will an upcoming holiday special. The company also announced its first Spanish-language original Delicisio, another cooking series with Robert Rodriguez, whose shuttered El Rey network found new life on The Roku Channel.
Building off of the company’s past acquisition of This Old House, Roku will also debut a new series called Idea House in July, and has already been picked up for Season 2, coming next year.
The company also gave a first look at Slip starring Zoe Lister-Jones and Honest Renovations, starring Jessica Alba and Lizzy Mathis.
The Roku Channel picked up Die Harter, Most Dangerous Game: New York, Children Ruin Everything and Chrissy’s Court for additional seasons.
“The goal here is to take a variety of content and bring it into the platform and really resonate with our consumers all from a premium perspective and make it ad-supported,” Kristina Shepard, head of agency partnerships and national brand team lead at Roku, previously told Adweek.
“Content has been a mainstay of the upfront,” she added. “We’re obviously playing in that content space in a major way now. We’re going to go bigger, bolder there, which you’ll see on stage with us.”
Roku Brand Studio adds more
The Roku Brand Studio is just over a year old, but branded content has been a hit for the company.
“What makes the Roku Brand studio different? We do two things better than anyone: data and distribution,” said Chris Bruss, head of the brand studio, pointing to Roku’s partnership with TurboTax as an example.
Roku revealed The Short List, in partnership with Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine, which will bring brands into 12 short-form films across four genres–drama, comedy, documentary and animation.
That announcement follows the previous announcement that The Roku Channel and Hello Sunshine partnered for the unscripted show To Paris For Love: A Reality Rom Com.
Roku Recommends is returning for a second season in September, this time in partnership with Variety to reveal top 10 lists. Hosts Maria Menounos and Andrew “Hawk” Hawkins also emceed the NewFronts presentation.
Shoppable ads arrive
A new program for retailers will pair shoppable ads with Roku Pay to sell products they carry, right from the TV screen. Powered by OneView, Shepard said that this year the company’s focus is on making sure that it’s rolling out ad capabilities and features that cater to a TV budget.
It works by adding an overlay to an existing add, so streamers can click okay inside the existing ad. Then Roku will optimize the ad to where streamers are most likely to pay attention, and a message will be sent to a phone number on file with the link to the brand’s website. The offering is first coming to OneView.
“We want to make sure that we’re rolling out TV-first programmatic features because advertisers and publishers alike need that in the programmatic ecosystem in order to really move massive amounts of TV budgets,” she previously said.
Roku also announced a partnership with Microsoft, which it described as “industry-first.” Microsoft Audience Insights works to explore how TV advertising—both linear and streaming— impacts online searches.
The new announcements follow several recent ones the company made ahead of the presentation.
Last month, the company debuted an end-to-end dynamic linear ad beta program with publishers, which will roll out broadly in the second quarter. AMC, Discovery, Crown and Paramount have already signed on as partners.
In February, Roku added Nielsen’s Digital Ad Ratings audience guarantees to OneView, which the connected TV company said made OneView the first ad-buying platform to enable Nielsen guarantees across TV streaming.
There’s also Roku’s advertising watermark, a free technology that validates video ads on Roku’s platforms. A variety of partners have signed on, including Discovery and Fox.
Most recently, Roku announced its clean room, which it says will allow advertisers and agencies to use first-party data to make planning and measuring ad campaigns with Roku easier.
