Roku

Roku will put video ads on the home screen

Ben Schoon | Apr 29 2024 - 7:51 am PT

Roku has plans to put video ads on the home screen, the company confirmed in a recent earnings call.

Ads have become a huge part of virtually every smart TV platform at this point, but how they show up varies from platform to platform. Roku, for the most part, has stuck to static ads that appear throughout the UI and apps. However, Roku has now confirmed plans to bring video ads to the home screen.

In its latest earnings call, Roku CEO Anthony Wood revealed that the platform will soon start showing video ads on the home screen, which The Streamable compares to Amazon’s full-screen, auto-playing video ads which rolled out last year. However, the experience may be a bit less intrusive. The full quote, as shared by Cord Cutters News, says:

But to give you some examples of the kinds of things we’re looking at on the home screen, on the home screen today, there’s the premier video app we called the Marquee and that traditionally has been a static ad. We’re going to add video to that ad. So that will be the first video ad in that we add to the home screen. That will be a big change for us.

We’re also testing other types of video ad units, looking at other experiences we can add to the home screen that would be where we can innovate more video advertising. So that’s something we’re looking at.

It’s not entirely clear exactly what part of the home screen Wood is referring to here, as there’s nothing officially called “Marquee” on the home screen. But, in any case, Wood directly says it will be “the first video ad… we add to the home screen.”

As mentioned, other platforms have also been using video ads on the home screen for a while. On one end of the spectrum, there’s Amazon, which plays the ads automatically when you turn on the TV and in fullscreen, and on the other end, there’s Google TV, which only plays the video if you hover over a specific portion of the home screen.

What do you think about video ads on the Roku home screen?

Notably, this news comes just a few weeks after it was found that Roku is also toying with placing ads over HDMI inputs on your TV.