Roku Touts OneView, Original Shows and Streaming's Power at NewFronts Event

The largest connected TV player in the marketplace kicked off the 2021 NewFronts with a presentation that highlighted the growth of streaming, the strength of its ad offerings and its plunge into original programming. Linear TV is declining, and Roku wants marketers to know it. “Last year marked a lot of firsts for Roku and streaming too,” Alison Levin, vp of ad sales and strategy, said during the presentation. “The first time people 18-34 spent more time on streaming than on linear. The first time The Roku Channel launched live linear channels and became the fastest growing channel in the platform's history, and more new first-time Roku partners than ever before." “TV has always been about reach and digital about action; streaming is about both,” said Levin. Roku is the biggest of the connected TV players who are looking to aggressively court linear ad dollars at this year's NewFronts. Levin said nearly half of connected TV ad impressions occur on Roku devices, and 57% of Roku users do not have a pay TV subscription. During Monday’s NewFront presentation, Roku touted the power of its OneView platform, which is coming up on the one-year anniversary of its rebrand. In March, Roku announced a new strategic partnership with Nielsen and the acquisition of its advanced video advertising business. The deal makes OneView one of the first buying platforms to provide Nielsen reach and frequency reporting by age and gender across all four screens: Linear TV, TV streaming, desktop and mobile. “It's been a holy grail forever for the buyers to be able to have a single metric of reaching frequency across all channels, it's been hard to do,” said Nielsen CEO David Kenny during the presentation. “There's been a cacophony of measurements out there. And I think together we're bringing that to something that's manageable, consistent and scalable.” Rebranding Quibi's content for Roku Roku’s second emphasis is on its various ad experiences. Last month, Roku announced it is rebranding the acquired Quibi content as Roku Originals, launching on The Roku Channel. The brand will also be the home for future original programming from Roku. Though Roku didn’t reveal exactly when that content will be available, more details will be available later this month. The banner also serves as the home of the Roku-acquired This Old House and Ask This Old House. “It really brings all that diverse content exclusively within The Roku Channel, which is the No. 2 ad-supported channel on the platform,” Kristina Shepard, national brand team leader for Roku, told Adweek. And within all that original content, there will be branded opportunities available, thanks to the branded content studio, announced in March, designed to produce new creative ad formats and TV programming tailored for advertisers to move beyond the traditional 30-second spot. During the presentation, Roku revealed alcohol brand Maker’s Mark will serve as the launch partner. Roku is currently in pre-production on a celeb-hosted talk show sponsored by a spirits brand, and developing a series of funny scripted vignettes for a potato chip brand. “The brand studio is really our ability to help partner with marketers to design, produce and distribute content,” said Shepard. “So, this will all be available to the hundreds and millions of people living in households and meet them where they are today, which is streaming.” Roku also emphasized its augmented reality for streaming abilities, seen in the TurboTax partnership earlier this year during March Madness, which allowed fans to shoot virtual hoops. “Now that we have ownership of the content, and we have the studio, it's really the marrying together of the content experience and the brand experience,” said Shepard. “The branded studio will bring to life the ability to not just create branded content, but also allow for product placement to allow for new innovative ad units that can run throughout the content itself.” Roku’s third major piece is the measurement partnership program. Last month, the company expanded the program to add six new firms that will help advertisers track campaigns across platforms and outcomes like app downloads or store visits. The new partners included mobile measurement companies Adjust, Kochava and Branch; retail data companies Affinity Solutions and IRI; and health-care data company Veeva Crossix. Current measurement partners include Comscore, IHS Markit, Nielsen and Kantar, bringing the overall offering to over 20 partners. Upfront-only benefits Roku also hit on new upfront-only benefits, which include expanded equivalized pricing for 15-second spots and first-ever two-day options. “This year we’re really excited to share that we're going to be enabling the ability to have an equivalized 15, meaning a brand will pay half what they paid for a 30, with a 15, beyond just The Roku Channel and actually have it available within top channels that we monetize,” said Shepard. This means that across Roku, select 15-second spots will be half the cost of a 30-second spot. And when it comes to two-day options, marketers will be able to adjust 100% of their campaigns within two days and move the entire buy across lines of business as needed. “Arguably, flexibility was one of the more important elements of last year's upfront. I think it's a lot of why we saw brands double their spend year over year,” said Shepard. “This year we’re really taking that a step further and we're offering rolling two-day options. Brands can optimize their media mix in real time to drive optimal business outcomes, and really take advantage of .. [the] increased growth of CTV while linear declines throughout the year.” Crackle Announces Redesign and New AVOD Service