Roku has expanded its Canadian TV offerings with the launch of the OneView advertising platform.
OneView provides advertisers with a self-serve platform that uses TV identity data from the Roku streaming platform to manage advertising across TV streaming, desktop and mobile campaigns.
Regional sales manager at Roku Christina Summers said that the OneView addition created a “programmatic platform that allows for real-time bidding and buying, both within the Roku environment, so buying onto Roku devices, as well as off Roku, and then combining that with other screens and what consumers might be using at the household.”
Roku is able to advertise products across multiple devices that use the same Roku ID. For example, a Roku user could watch something on their Roku device and receive an ad about an auto manufacturer. The next day, when they are streaming the Roku channel on their phone, the user may receive another message with a similar ad from the same company.
”You’re going to get, say, another message because we’ve identified you as the same consumer from the same household,” Summers said.
Apart from the cross-device identity solution, the OneView platform offers further campaign reach, allowing Roku’s data to identify heavy Subscription Video on Demand (SVOD) viewers for advertisers to target. The platform can also forecast TV streaming trends and calculate ad availability to plan a campaign and activate it across Roku and other TV streaming publishers.
Another part of the advertising expansion involves media agency Matterkind. Roku has signed Matterkind as its first Canadian OneView campaign partner. The first campaign ran through June for a major Canadian travel client. It promoted domestic tourism and enabled Matterkind to reach key audiences like younger families and mature travellers.
The move to streaming
Over the past year and a half, with households locked up due to COVID-19 closures, Roku has seen a huge increase in television time.
Summers said that the Roku State of Canadian TV Streaming study found that almost 50% of Canadians have signed up for new services in the past 12 months.
“We’ve seen growth across all ages and demographics, so it really does speak to the point that TV streaming is a mainstream product, it’s not [for] one particular niche audience,” she said.
She added that the study reported that nearly three-quarters of Canadians are streaming in some capacity.
This big move has created new opportunities for marketers to reach and engage customers with the same level of data and information available to digital advertisers.
In addition, Summers said they are able to detect trend spikes from specific events or seasons.
“Taking into account all channels and apps, we can see things like total streaming hours spikes…for Canada, there’s certainly a seasonality because we have some winter and let’s be honest, we’re all watching a little bit more in the winter.”
Roku streaming players and TV-related audio devices are available in Canada as well as other countries through direct retail sales and licensing agreements with service providers.
