Cheat Sheet: Connected TV platforms, ad-supported streamers pitch audience reach, original programming on first day of NewFronts

By Sara Guaglione

More people between the ages of 18 and 34 are watching streaming than linear TV. Streaming TV reaches an audience that is not tuning into linear TV, which is declining. Cord cutting is accelerating. That was the argument from most of the companies trying to lure ad buyers to spend money on their connected TV platforms and ad-supported streaming services on the first of the four-day Interactive Advertising Bureau’s 2021 NewFronts event, which kicked off yesterday.

The key details:

Connected TV platform owners Amazon, Roku, Samsung and Vizio touted the number of people their platforms reach.
Ad-supported streaming service providers Crackle and Fox’s Tubi announced original programming line-ups.
Presenters also pitched advanced advertising products, including a tool to manage how many times someone is exposed to a campaign and a method to retarget CTV viewers on other devices.

Roku

Roku’s NewFronts message: “start with streaming.” In other words, put your money into the streamers before traditional buys in linear TV.

Roku says it added 14 million new accounts in 2020, according to Alison Levin, vp, ad revenue & marketing solutions at Roku. Roku provides over 40,000 free movies and TV shows to its viewers, who have a median age of 39. In the first quarter of 2021, Roku reached an estimated 70 million people in the U.S., up 103% year-over-year, according to its presentation.

To reach those people across its CTV platform, Roku once again pitched its ad-buying platform OneView and touted offering Nielsen’s reach and frequency reporting by age and gender across linear TV, streaming, desktop and mobile, according to the company.

The OneView dashboard lets brands select the audience they want to reach (using their own customer data, Roku’s audience data or data from other providers), run their campaign on Roku’s free, ad-supported streaming TV service The Roku Channel and add in other media buys and measure performance (such as web visits, app downloads, store visits or cost per acquisition). Nielsen tags are added across advertisers’ upfronts brought into OneView, with daily reports to compare performance with other platforms or devices, for example.

“It’s been a holy grail forever for the buyers to be able to have a single metric of reach and frequency across all channels. It’s been hard to do… together we are bringing that to something that’s measurable, consistent and scalable,” Nielsen CEO David Kenny said during the presentation.

The company has also launched Roku Brand Studio to create branded content with advertisers; its launch partner is Maker’s Mark. Additionally, the company is offering to sell 15-second spots on The Roku Channel at half the cost of a 30-second spot, to make it easier to compare with traditional TV buys. Roku has also lowered its window for upfront advertisers to adjust or cancel 100% of their commitments from 14 days to two days before a campaign’s launch.

Finally, Roku has rebranded the more than 75 shows it acquired from Quibi (which went out of business) as “Roku Originals,” with programs that feature stars like Kevin Hart and Demi Lovato. Those shows will be …read more

Source:: Digiday