With the upfront TV advertising market on the horizon, Roku is offering a “Primetime Reach Guarantee” -- a competitive effort to improve the reach of TV homes versus that of a cable TV network.
Roku says the guarantee “brings a key benefit of cable advertising to TV streaming advertising,” where it “prioritizes” delivery to unique households across The Roku Channel and the additional top 100 channels on the platform.
Initial results for a financial services marketer showed that Roku reached more TV homes during a one-day prime-time media buy in the fourth quarter of 2022 (from 8:00 to 11:00 PM) than an average program on a top-five viewing cable network.
The Prime Reach Guarantee is available to buy directly from Roku, including programmatically through its supply-side platform, OneView.
Roku has 70 million active accounts.
Last summer, Roku warned of a TV slowdown to come in the later part of 2022. This came after news that Roku closed $1 billion in upfront advertising commitments. Statista estimated Roku totaled $1.4 billion in 2022.
Interesting, Wayne. maybe this will join the list of "alternative currencies" the the seller controlled "JIC" is evaluating. But how do they know what cable channels the buyer is buying---or might buy---while making their guarantee? Or does the buyer have to make the cable buys first, then negotiate with the folks at ROKU who can guarantee reach---weekly? monthly?---- against each cable channel? Or does this apply only to some cable channels? Well, it's good to see this kind of innovative thinking---especially for the upfront. Could be a game changer. Or even a sea changer?