Roku wants to save the day for advertisers on over-the-top (OTT) video.
The streaming platform launched a program Tuesday to help advertisers and publishers better understand the impact of their OTT campaigns on Roku. Roku’s Measurement Partner Program is made up of 11 partners, including Nielsen, comScore, Research Now, Nielsen Catalina Solutions, Acxiom, Experian, Oracle Data Cloud and more.
“In the past, brands didn’t have a standardized way to measure store visits and website visits and sales increases,” Dan Robbins, Roku’s director of ad and programming research, told AdExchanger. “These tools are exciting because to date, we’re the only OTT platform that’s enabling these full-funnel integrations with all these third parties.”
The partner program, which Robbins called the “Justice League of research companies,” is designed to track metrics like audience demographics, brand awareness and website and in-store purchases. It’s Roku’s way of bringing digital attribution into the TV space.
Each of Roku’s partners brings a different layer of expertise to the mix. Oracle is providing sales lift measurement, Robbins said. Nielsen and comScore are both providing audience demographics.
All of the components are built into Roku’s operating system, so any brand can use their preferred partner to better measure the efficacy of their ad campaign.
Fast food chain Jack in the Box worked with Roku’s partner Placed to measure its campaign on the platform. Between December 2017 and February 2018, Jack in the Box’s Roku campaign drove more than 164,000 store visits, 43% of which came from new customers.
“Traditionally, this is something you wouldn’t be able to do in television,” Robbins said. “But OTT is ready for the main stage.”
Roku has doubled down on its measurement capabilities over the last year. In January, it launched its Ad Insights measurement platform, which gave select partners access to its first-party data. Its ad sales strategy seems to be working: Roku’s ad business makes up two-thirds of its platform revenue, according to Q2 earnings.
