Roku announced the debut of Roku Ads Manager, a self-service platform aimed at attracting performance marketers who use social media and search and allowing them to purchase linked TV.
Performance marketers will be able to develop campaigns with shoppable advertising linked to their Shopify accounts, as well as interactive advertisements using advertising Manager.
With large corporations investing more of their advertising budgets in digital, major media organizations have developed self-service buying platforms to attract newer, smaller, and direct-to-consumer advertisers.
Roku has been fighting for large marketers’ budgets, but it has now created Ads Manager for advertisers that are familiar with the way digital advertising is purchased, targeted, and reported.
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“We expect new entrants to be the primary users of this interface.” Roku’s senior director of Ad Innovation, Peter Hamilton, told Broadcasting+Cable that the company has had interest from all types of advertisers.
There is no minimum budget for Roku Ads Manager users.
“Roku Ads Manager made it incredibly easy for Criquet Shirts to enter the CTV space,” said Hobson Brown, co-founder of Criquet Shirts, one of the beta participants. “The platform’s intuitive setup and unique interactive ad formats allowed us to quickly create and launch campaigns, all while effectively reaching key geos and audiences on the big screen.”
While the majority of new advertisers utilizing Ads Manager are mid-sized or direct-to-consumer businesses, “we are also seeing marketers and advertisers with fairly large budgets for buying search and social. They are familiar with that buying strategy and want to adapt it to CTV and execute it with an optimized system,” he added.
“Digital natives are moving in droves to CTV. Hamilton believes that a platform like this is clearly intended to assist them in developing their approach in this area. “We’re looking for the growth hackers of CTV to teach us the future of this channel.”
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Hamilton stated that advertisers will be able to purchase inventory directly from Roku on Roku-owned channels, as well as inventory obtained via ad-supported apps on the platform.
Hamilton explained that buying directly results in more efficient pricing.
“We have lots of different waterfalls in ways that we expose our supply to different kinds of platforms and advertisers,” according to him. “What makes this powerful is the direct access to Roku. That suggests there is a significant level of cost efficiency.”
Roku Ads Manager has been in beta for approximately a year, with hundreds of advertisers testing it, according to Hamilton.
“It’s been fascinating learning from those advertisers and learning exactly what they need to be successful,” he told me. “By opening up a solution like this, you have the opportunity to let marketers tell you what the product should be.”
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During the beta test, Roku introduced capabilities to Ads Manager, such as an integration with Shopify, which allows advertisers to make their ads shoppable and viewers to make purchases using their Roku remote controllers.
Ads Manager users can additionally incorporate “action ads” in their campaigns. Action ads allow viewers to hit the “OK” button on their remotes and send themselves a text message about the ad they just saw.
Hamilton stated that Action Ads are among Roku’s most popular ad forms. He also stated that integrating interaction improves brand remember, purchasing intent, and, eventually, sales.
A shoppable ad is available through Roku Ads Manager. (Image credit: Roku.)
Roku has also created an AI Upscaler tool that converts a marketer’s social media content into television quality, boosting visual sharpness and clarity.
“I would highly recommend that markers take creative that’s working well for them in other places and bring it to CTV,” added the director.
“One of the most exciting things about self-service is that an advertiser can roll out 10, 20, 50 different campaigns and creatives and figure out what’s really resonating with audiences and what’s not,” Hamilton told me. “And it won’t take quarters to figure out what’s working best. You know, in days.”
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