Louqman Parampath, Roku’s vp of product management, advertising, joined around the same time as Levin in 2015, knowing the opportunity was in video advertising and developing ways to monetize apps on the platform.
“We knew our differentiation was going to be around targeting, data and identity,” Parampath said. “Every Roku user was a logged-in user, and that gave us the ability to accurately reach a user.”
Roku initially started with third-party technology in order to scale, using Google as its ad server, but quickly realized it needed to take its tech in-house (which Parampath thinks will be the pattern Netflix soon follows).
A lot of Roku’s earlier deals were with traditional brand buyers, which is why a partnership with Nielsen made sense. Roku became one of the first platforms to integrate ACR data, and in 2019 acquired Dataxu, which became the company’s OneView platform.
At the time, Roku had not yet launched Roku Originals or its AVOD offering, The Roku Channel. This meant the company had no access to video ad inventory. Instead, the company worked with clients on content distribution agreements for a share of inventory to aggregate and sell in an addressable manner, integrating it with the Roku Ad Framework. That made it so the publishers could share that percentage of their ad inventory in a targetable way.
“When we enabled DAR (Nielsen’s Digital Ad Ratings), we did it for every publisher on the platform because the goal was to not just make Roku successful, but to make CTV successful,” Parampath said. “Anything we built for our own media, we tried to make it available for publishers.”
The company has a simple mission: make “streaming better,” according to Robbins.
“We’ll all be better off when we can make streaming better for everybody, and we’ll all be better off when we can make the consumer experience better and share it with our partners and our advertisers,” Robbins said.
No time like the NewFronts
It’s no secret the market has become saturated. Still, Roku deliberately decided to stay in the NewFronts instead of moving to upfront week this year, marking the company’s second time at the IAB event. And Robbins teased a “bunch of firsts” were on the way in the May 2 presentation at Chelsea Factory.
Levin said the company “debated quite a bit” if it should move to upfront week instead, ultimately deciding against it.
“As a marketer, how can you actually figure out how to plan for Netflix or Disney or anyone else if you don’t understand what the foundation is?” Levin said. “We want to be in the NewFronts because we want to help marketers understand the size of the platform, how you can reach consumers and how can you become unmissable however they’re watching,” she said, adding that the company has a “real reason” to go ahead of others.