Roku Introduces New Analytics and Planning Tools for OTT Advertisers

By STS News Desk On May 23, 2019

Roku Introduces New Analytics and Planning Tools for OTT Advertisers

Activation Insights Helps Brands Better Understand Linear Viewing and OTT Spend

Roku, Inc. announced Activation Insights, a powerful new tool to target audiences that have shifted to OTT. The capability combines a comprehensive review of a brand’s linear TV campaign performance, with an analysis of the potential OTT audience missed and the optimal budget spend on the Roku platform.

“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.”

Activation Insights is part of Roku Ad Insights Suite, which helps brands measure campaign reach and effectiveness across linear TV and OTT. With deep first-party insights from Roku’s 29.1 million active accounts brands can now better model potential investment with Roku and estimate an unduplicated, incremental audience – whether the audience is light TV viewers and cord-cutters or viewers who were under or over exposed to a brand’s ads on linear TV.

“Smart marketers are significantly increasing investments in OTT to reflect the dramatic shift to streaming,” said Scott Rosenberg, SVP and GM, Platform Business, Roku. “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.”

According to Magna Global, OTT accounts for 29 percent of TV viewing but so far has only captured 3 percent of TV ad budgets. Roku provides significant scale and reach to help advertisers catch up to where consumers already are. Additionally, Roku offers advertisers some of the most advanced tools in OTT to deliver more effective, targeted and measurable campaigns.

With Roku’s Reach Insights measurement tool brands such as Baskin Robbins and RE/MAX found that a sizable audience was no longer being reached via their linear TV campaigns. Eighty-six percent of people age 18-49 who saw a Baskin Robbins ad on the Roku platform did not see the ad on linear TV, leading to a 10.6 percent incremental reach. Additionally, 81 percent of users age 25-54 who saw a RE/MAX ad on the Roku platform did not see the ad on linear TV, leading to a 9.2 percent incremental reach.

“This year’s TV upfront made one thing very clear, OTT is the new cable and powerful new video channel to reach today’s consumers,” said Michael Piner, SVP, Video and Data Drive Investments, MullenLowe. “Roku’s tool helps show us just how effective OTT is at reaching our advertisers’ valuable consumers. It gives us a detailed look behind the GRP, allowing us to identify key audiences we’re missing or over/under exposed to Linear TV ads but that can be effectively reached on their Roku devices.”