Hard to have your earnings when a new episode of the Netflix/WBD/Paramount saga drops! We couldn’t resist but still managed to cover Pinterest, TF1 and Roku.
Speaking of Roku, everyone is framing The Roku Channel as a FAST/AVOD success story. That framing is incomplete. Most analyses reduce Roku’s rise in Nielsen’s Gauge to “Free TV momentum” and move past Roku’s ability to monetise the same attention across advertising AND subscriptions. No I’m not talking about apps on their App Store, I’m talking about their own app, The Roku Channel, which is number 2 (after YouTube) on their platform in terms of engagement.
Roku is rebuilding the bundle from the bottom up by collapsing free and paid viewing into a single, continuous journey. Inside The Roku Channel, viewers move from free linear channels to on-demand titles and into premium add-ons (e.g. HBO Max, AMC, Paramount Plus etc.) without ever leaving Roku’s UX, billing or recommendation environment, which allows Roku to stack ad yield and subscription revenue on the same viewing time. Roku is not just capturing ad dollars, it is positioning itself upstream of monetisation decisions. If your Roku Channel strategy stops at FAST/AVOD distribution, you are only playing the top of the funnel.
I unpacked this premium layer in a recent edition of Streaming Made Easy, including the 72 subscription services on Roku, pricing logic, gaps and more.
If you don’t believe me, hear it from Anthony Wood directly.
Our final earnings season’s live is set for Friday 27th at 4pm GMT so we can cover WBD and Paramount’s earnings.
See you then,
Marion
