Roku touts new way to measure commercials, even those on linear TV

Connected TV is one of the hot topics for discussion at Advertising Week, and Roku was among the streaming digital players taking the opportunity to promote a new way to measure how many times a commercial is seen, whether in an app or on linear TV.

On Monday, Roku announced a new measurement partnership with Innovid, a video marketing platform, during a panel at Advertising Week. Roku is using Innovid, and its relationship with advertisers that buy connected TV ad campaigns, to show that commercials appearing on Roku can perform similar to traditional TV advertising.

Roku and Innovid claim they have come up with a unique way to measure TV spots. There are 30.5 million Roku devices and smart TVs in circulation, and the company is able to tell brands when their commercials are viewed on any of those screens.

“Brands can understand how many time their message hits a household,” says Alison Levin, VP of sales and strategy at Roku, during a phone interview following her Advertising Week discussion. “It seems like a simple ask but it hasn’t been available.”

Roku is the streaming digital player that connects to the internet and provides digital videos apps to homes, often as an alternative to cable subscriptions. This type of internet-based viewing is sometimes called over-the-top TV, because it bypasses the traditional cable box. It also falls into the connected TV category, as in “internet connected.” The ad-supported internet TV space is increasingly important to advertisers as a younger generation of viewers watch less linear TV. Roku is competing with Amazon, Disney, Google, Facebook and a host of streaming startups for advertisers’ video dollars.

In the second quarter, Roku’s ad revenue reached $168 million, growing 86 percent year-over-year.

Roku has been investing in data, ad targeting and measurement as a way to pry ad dollars away from TV. The company has deals with smart TV makers, too, which is how it is able to detect ads even when they aren’t technically streamed through apps on Roku. A viewer could be watching cable on a smart TV and, if a certain commercial runs, Roku can recognize it and report back to brands. Roku wants brands to be able to compare the effectiveness of their campaigns through traditional cable and through viewership on its devices.

At the Advertising  Week panel, Jonathan Steuer, Omnicom Media Group’s chief research officer, said advertisers have been asking Roku and others for this type of comprehensive view of ad campaigns on connected TVs. The space has so many players and so many apps that, combined with consumers still watching linear TV, it can be hard for advertisers to understand how many times an ad was served.

Jessica Hogue, Innovid’s GM of measurement and analytics, Mike Law, president of Dentsu’s Amplifi, were also on stage at Advertising Week, discussing the future of connected TV.

“All TV will be streamed,” Levin says.