• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, December 9, 2024

Major linear TV advertising brands believe there was hope that CTV could help find the ability to extend the reach of more consumers.

CTV platforms will be hopeful in part of another growth area: New digital-first advertisers.

For next year Roku projects that 20,000 new small and medium-sized businesses are poised to enter the marketplace.

Optimism can be a strong theme for any new media sales platform.

Brian Wieser, media analyst/writer of Madison and Wall, estimates that the 20,000 largest advertisers ”who don’t buy television at present probably have annual advertising budgets of around $500,000.”

Wieser guesses that if these advertisers shift half of their spend into TV he estimates, it would amount to $5 billion -- about 7% of all TV advertising, or 24% of CTV advertising.

Even then, those 20,000 would only gradually shift their media dollars into TV streaming. Roku is estimating an increase of 20,000 just in 2025.

If any of this happens, it is not like those advertisers and their media spend would have any real effect on linear TV or streaming -- “as these advertisers would only be partially replacing other advertisers who continue to shift spend away from linear television.”

Roku’s prediction comes as it nears the saturation point in a marketplace in terms of its own reach -- now 85 million monthly active Roku users. In that regard, increasingly it is looking for new revenue sources of growth from up-and coming brands.

Give Roku credit. It was seemingly written off by some analysts many times who said it was too small and would never have enough market leverage.

Now Roku has grown to point that analysts are talking up the company as a potential takeover target by big demand-side advertising platforms like The Trade Desk.

Roku has deep and smart TV-centric ACR data (Automatic Content Recognition) and clear access to major content publishers -- highly valuable stuff for some platforms.

While this would seemingly mean some good news for CTV’s future, brands may have another hopeful list of things to want: Expanding ad inventory availability, capping frequency, and offering better transparency.

The promise and expectation of streaming continues for many -- as well as lower ad pricing. Could it be this easy?