With the audience now firmly established in the CTV environment, the focus is turning toward making those impressions count.
For some, the next phase of CTV advertising involves moving beyond simple reach to drive tangible consumer action.
That is the opportunity for streaming platforms to evolve advertising from broad exposure to measurable patient engagement, said Jake Piasecki, co-head of enterprise ad sales, Roku, in this video interview with Beet.TV.
Replacing linear reach is just the beginning
The tipping point for streaming television has already passed. Recent data from Nielsen’s The Gauge report confirms that streaming’s share of total TV time has consistently eclipsed both cable and broadcast, cementing its place as the dominant viewing format. For platforms, the first job is to capture that migrating audience.
“Roku is America’s number one streaming platform. We see an outsized share of time spent in terms of streaming and viewing, and so that scale is replacing linear scale,” Piasecki said. “What we’re seeing in the linear ecosystem is a continued cord cutting and the shrinking of that total available audience that was once a big piece of how linear was a great reach vehicle. We’re seeing that reach shift now to streaming, and we’re finding on Roku is that we’re replacing linear reach with Roku reach.”
But simple reach is just table stakes, according to Piasecki. The key differentiator is the platform’s user interface, particularly the home screen, which he described as the gateway for nearly all viewing sessions. “Our home screen is super valuable and a massive differentiator,” he said. “A big reason is that 125 million people use that screen every single day, that’s Super Bowl reach every single day, to start their TV experience.”
Creating a virtuous cycle for targeting
That home screen real estate provides a unique entry point for what Piasecki calls a “virtuous cycle” of ad targeting, moving beyond the traditional “one-way street” of serving an ad to a predefined audience segment. The goal is to create a feedback loop that refines targeting in real time based on user interaction.
“Imagine putting together and leveraging that ad unit and showcasing an ad on our home screen. It opens up to a new audience,” he explained. “Maybe that consumer clicks on the ad and now you’ve jumped from a static ad to an engagement opportunity.
“We see the advertiser winning there because either we’re pushing them further down the funnel or we’re saving them money by driving to more reach in the future versus frequency on a consumer that may not be the right person.”
The next frontier is fragmented sports streaming
Piasecki identified the “explosion of streaming sports” as a major trend creating both challenges for consumers and opportunities for platforms. As leagues increasingly offer games across a patchwork of different services, the viewing experience is becoming highly fragmented, a development that aggregator platforms are keen to solve.
“This NFL season marks the first season that all NFL games can be streamed on a streaming app, which is a first. We know there’s a conundrum around how consumers find what they want to stream,” Piasecki said. He pointed to analysis showing the complexity and cost involved. It can require “10 different apps to stream all of the NFL. It’s going to cost over $930 this season if we wanted to do it that way,” he added, citing a figure consistent with media reports on the cost of comprehensive NFL streaming.
This fragmentation presents an opportunity for platforms like Roku to simplify discovery and help sports leagues connect with their fans, according to Piasecki. “There’s a big opportunity for us to capture better attention of consumers and to better help leagues in how they’re reaching their consumer set and making sure that consumers can find their favorite games where they want them,” he said.
