Dive Brief:
- Drizly, Experian, Intuit TurboTax and Lexus are the launch partners for Roku's new ad platform, called OneView, the company said in a press release.
- The OneView Ad Platform aims to help advertisers ramp up their streaming ad programs by leveraging streaming TV identity data so marketers can plan, buy and measure ads across over-the-top (OTT), desktop and mobile data from one platform.
- The offering is designed to integrate the reach, inventory and capabilities of Roku's existing advertising solution, with the identity and attribution tools from demand-side platform Dataxu. It promises to reach four out of five U.S. homes.
Dive Insight:
Roku's new ad platform comes as more consumers are cutting the cord and opting for streaming video options over traditional cable. OneView was originally the name of Dataxu's cross-device identity graph, according to AdExchanger, but Dataxu is now being rebranded as part of its integration with Roku's ad platform following its acquistion last fall.
For advertisers, the challenge in the current streaming environment has been the ability to reach a large enough audience for their ads in a landscape that is still young, fragmented and has limited inventory. Roku aims to help advertisers address these problems with OneView and the promise that advertisers can reach four out of five U.S. homes.
As noted in AdExchanger, early brand partners for OneView, such as delivery app Drizly or grocer Giant Eagle, key into some of the advantages it could provide marketers as some states start to open up business operations following coronavirus lockdown. By leveraging Roku's household user data, campaigns run through the platform can direct people to nearby stores or promote an action like downloading an app, per AdExchanger.
"We're shifting traditional TV budget to OTT and now manage it all in OneView because we can leverage our own data at scale and quickly respond to changes in the market," Rhasaan Wilks, performance marketing manager at grocery chain Giant Eagle, said in the press release from Roku.
As more viewers move to streaming, particularly during the coronavirus pandemic, advertisers are looking for ways to reach consumers through the channel. Marketers boosted their advertising spending on local OTT TV by 127% last year to reach audiences on connected TVs, according to a study by ZypMedia. The total number of local OTT campaigns increased 58% while the number of advertisers rose 33% from a year earlier.
As more advertisers shift ad budgets from traditional TV to streaming services, streaming platforms like Roku are looking to capitalize on the trend by beefing up their advertising solutions for marketers. For Roku, this also includes it teaming up with video marketing platform Innovid last September on a marketing analytics tool that allows brands to track the daily demographic reach of ads.
In related news, Comcast's NBCUniversal recently started a streaming advertising business for its local and regional connected TV (and OTT advertisers called NBC Spot On.
In a reflection of the potentially high stakes involved in OTT advertising, when Roku acquired Dataxu last October for $150 million, Amazon quickly moved to cut Dataxu from its Fire TV third-party DSP service.
