Roku CEO Says Company Will Continue to Focus on Originals, Licensed Content to Increase Engagement
It’s been over a year since Roku and Lionsgate signed a multiyear pay-one distribution agreement allowing the studio’s theatrical releases to stream on the Roku Channel. Coupled with the increase in original content, that deal has led the ad-supported video-on-demand (AVOD) and free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) service, to see an 85% increase in user engagement in the most recent earnings report; and Roku has no plans of slowing down.
The company plans to continue focusing on improving its content offerings to enhance engagement, as customer satisfaction is tied to the more people stream, Roku CEO Anthony Wood said at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom Conference in San Francisco on Monday. The move is designed to encourage users to more regularly engage with the platform, making it more of an everyday part of their lives, rather than a service they can move away from more easily. The company reported in its fourth-quarter earnings that The Roku Channel had added 4.6 million monthly active accounts, bringing its total to 70 million; the growth represents a 16% increase over the corresponding quarter in 2021.
“Roku’s role as a platform is different from that of a streaming service,” Wood said. “One of our biggest jobs is to help consumers find content across the entire platform.”
For instance, Roku released its Sports Zone aggregator in November to make it easier for users to discover where to watch leagues and sporting events without having to search through numerous apps.
“Those 70 million active accounts, when they turn on the TV and they see the Roku home screen, that’s our biggest competitive advantage … to help viewers find content and help services promote their content,” he said. “They’re spending more time looking for content [and] we’re doing a better job of helping them find content, and that’s a big competitive advantage for us to own that home screen, and it’s a big way to boost engagement by being a trusted partner for viewers to find content.”
If there’s one thing Roku isn’t lacking, it’s content. Roku has over 450 free ad-supported TV (FAST) channels, with more coming every month. At the end of February, Roku added 11 new channels to its users, which include Screambox TV, a channel featuring horror and thriller content from AMC’s dedicated spooky streaming service and Dateline 24/7, which airs NBC’s beloved weekly magazine 24 hours per day.
New selections available on The Roku Channel also include free channels from Warner Bros. Discovery. “Westworld, “Raised by Wolves,” “Legendary,” “FBoy Island,” “The Nevers,” and other series were among the former HBO Max shows that were made available on Roku as part of an agreement struck by WBD in early January.
More recently, Roku came to an agreement with pocket.watch to provide the service with original kids content. In its short lifespan, pocket.watch has become home to some of the most popular content for Generation Alpha that exists, with its show “Ryan’s World” garnering over a billion views on YouTube. Now, five of its series will air exclusively on the Roku Channel.
All of this shows just how far the company has come since starting with a back catalog of movies and TV shows.
“We promoted it in the [user interface], and it’s free and it’s a great value, and our cord-cutters love stuff that’s free. So that’s the virtuous cycle. It’s just made it bigger and bigger and bigger,” Wood said. “And now we’re at the point where we license content … We have an output deal for movies with Lionsgate, and we produce our own originals now. So it’s a whole range.”
Roku Channel
The Roku Channel is a free live TV streaming service that provides 350+ live linear streaming channels and more than 80,000 free movies and TV shows. The library contains entertainment from several different decades, including some major hits.