Wednesday Roku announced Roku Exchange, a TV streaming-first ad techs solution that connects ad inventory with advertiser demand. It serves as the central supply hub within the Roku platform, providing a direct path to ad inventory in the programmatic ecosystem. Combining Roku’s advertising supply with identity data and AI-driven optimization capabilities, advertisers will be able to maximize the performance of their campaigns, and the process of buying Roku Media and TV streaming ad placements will be accessible to more buyers.
Louqman Parampath, VP of Product Management at Roku, says, “Roku Exchange is the mediation layer that serves ads and enriches impressions, based on Roku data from over tens of millions of streaming households. Engagement on the Roku platform represents around 50% of all time spent watching TV streaming in the U.S. Democratizing access to Roku Media, which includes video and native ad formats across the ecosystem for all demand-side partners, brings better results for advertisers while also keeping the consumer’s experience best in class.”
According to a report from Comscore published this week, Roku is the most popular CTV operating system by time spent, representing 49% of the total market. Amazon garners 16% of streaming viewing time, and Samsung 14%.
The report also says advertisers and agencies are now expanding into FAST channels, with the goal of finding incremental, untapped audiences to make each dollar more efficient for their campaigns. As a result, Comscore has expanded its existing coverage of Roku by including The Roku Channel in Comscore’s planning tool, Connected TV Intelligence (CTVi), which shows that Roku is the number one TV operating system by time spent in the U.S., with twice the usage of the next largest TV OS when it comes to FAST channel usage: Roku (42%), PlutoTV (38%) and Tubi (20%).
To facilitate the exchange between supply and demand, TV streaming publishers need technology that leverages unique data with flexibility and control. As the central supply hub within the Roku platform, Roku Exchange is responsible for supply integrations, fair auctions, ad decisioning and is integrated with the Magnite supply-side platform (SSP) to connect into the larger programmatic landscape.
Programmatic access to TV streaming inventory and identity data, enables advertisers to reach their audiences accurately and precisely on Roku, the company says. Rich content signals from the Roku Channel and other premium TV streaming publishers provide transparent content, genre reporting, and optimization. Exchange also offers AI optimization to maximize audience engagement with content through personalized ad breaks and tailored ad creative campaigns.
The features within Roku Exchange have long been central to Roku’s advertising capabilities and are now optimized to integrate within the programmatic ecosystem. Demand-side platforms (DSPs) such as The Trade Desk, Google Display & Video 360, and Yahoo DSP benefit from the customization of programmatic signals Roku Exchange can send to drive Roku Media success on their platforms.
