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Today, Roku announced the launch of Roku Ads Manager, its new self-service offering for CTV advertising.
Among the highlights, the ads manager is set to help marketers with optimization and performance, utilizing Roku’s CTV footprint to drive awareness and bottom-of-funnel engagement; it will give advertisers direct access to Roku inventory without third-party fees, helping with efficiency and pricing; and marketers can now generate action ads, which allow for interactive video overlays.
In addition, Shopify merchants can launch self-service shoppable ads that let consumers checkout on-screen using their Roku remote.
According to Roku, the new ads manager will act as a one-stop solution for advertisers to buy CTV broadly on the Roku Channel and other ad-supported channels.
“It’s a very easy media buying platform that is fundamentally targeting performance and growth marketers who are moving more and more of their buying dollars into CTV from traditional ways in which they bought social, search, and other digital channels,” Louqman Parampath, vice president, product management, advertising, Roku, told ADWEEK. “We feel like CTV is proud to take on some of those budgets.”
According to Parampath, Roku utilizes hundreds of thousands of attributes on the platform to optimize campaign goals, using machine learning and AI algorithms to deliver advertiser KPIs.
“It brings all of the targeting and measurement and optimization capabilities,” Parampath added. “These help buyers to come in and buy CTV in a very easy-to-buy campaign management UI.”
With the launch of Roku Ads Manager, the company joins an ongoing trend of publishers trying to reach small and medium-sized businesses with self-service solutions. For instance, Paramount launched its own ads manager earlier in the year, and Disney told ADWEEK at Cannes Lions about its plan to reach smaller advertisers.
However, Parampath noted that Roku’s operating system and ability to reach local media through more than 80 million households set it apart.
“You could effectively reach the vast majority of those platforms by buying through local media,” Parampath said. “One is the fundamental scale of the Roku platform itself that will be available. A lot of these buyers want to do very hyper-local targeting or want to optimize to get to the users that will buy their products. When you are trying to get to those users, the scale leads to more likelihood that you will find the users that you’re looking for.”