Big Law
Roku Acquires Nielsen’s Advanced TV Advertising Division
Roku on Monday announced that it is acquiring Nielsen’s advanced TV advertising division as it works to help traditional television ad dollars migrate more quickly to streaming.
Why it matters: The deal will give Roku, the top smart TV operating system in the U.S., access to the technology it needs to help grow the digital TV advertising landscape broadly.
Catch up quick: While most people think of Roku as a smart TV hardware provider, the company actually makes the bulk of its money off of the operating system that runs on its devices.
- The company said it made $1.2 billion in “platform” (operating system) revenue last year, driven largely by ad sales on the Roku Channel, its free ad-supported news and entertainment network.
- Digital TV ads are typically found on streaming services. But increasingly, because so many people in America use smart TVs to also watch live TV broadcasts, smart TV operators like Roku are trying to insert digital TV ads into linear TV broadcasts, where most TV programming dollars are still transacted.
- This adoption has moved slowly, because the providers of such advanced TV advertising technologies, like Nielsen, haven’t had access to smart devices at the scale that an internet TV software provider like Roku has. (Roku as of this year has more than 50 million active accounts.)
