Roku introduces OTT audience tool 'to reflect the dramatic shift to streaming'
Roku has launched an over-the-top TV (OTT) media planning tool as it looks to carve out a larger slice of brands' traditional, linear TV spend.
Roku is looking to help brands measure campaigns across linear TV and OTT
Dubbed Activation Insights, the tool should help brands find hard-to-reach consumers who are either watching less cable TV or cutting the cord altogether.
"Smart marketers are significantly increasing investments in OTT to reflect the dramatic shift to streaming,” said Scott Rosenberg, senior vice-president and general manager of Roku's platform business.
“By adding the ability to tie advertising performance on linear with a specific audience that advertisers can gain on OTT, we are addressing a long-standing industry challenge for OTT media planning. We believe it’s no longer a question of when advertising budgets will shift to streaming but how much.”
With Activation Insights, Roku will combine its subscriber data and automatic content recognition data, a system baked into Roku's 10m-plus smart TVs that can measure a consumer's linear viewing habits.
Advertisers can then plan against that to balance out their TV spend and target viewers who gravitate more toward OTT streaming services. According to Magna Global, OTT accounts for 29% of TV viewing, but it only captures 3% of TV ad budgets.
Activation Insights comes during an upfronts season dominated by talks of OTT. NBC Universal, Disney and WarnerMedia all touted their new digital options as they look to keep pace with disruptors such as Netflix and Amazon.
Roku continues to sharpen its advertiser offerings, as it recently partnered with Adobe to clean up frequency capping and measurement issues that have held back advertising in the burgeoning medium.