Roku unveils 2025’s biggest TV trends
Roku unveils 2025’s biggest TV trends
The new Roku Rewind breakdown of 2025’s biggest TV moments reveals interesting details about what audiences are consuming most.
It’s suddenly December, and that means that 2025 is nearly over. There’s still plenty of time to reflect on the year, however, and a new report from Roku is offering fascinating insight into the biggest television trends of 2025. The Roku Rewind 2025 report discusses which markets saw the most streaming activity, which TV genres were the most sought after, and where viewers should expect advertisers to focus their efforts going forward.
Key Details:
- Streaming south: Mississippi and other Southern states led in streaming hours per capita in 2025.
- Youth trends: Gen Z adults are consuming large amounts of animated shows.
- Get ghoulish: Original horror saw a big jump in searches generated on the Roku platform.
Southern states led the way in the U.S. in terms of streaming hours per capita in 2025, per Roku’s data. Mississippi had the highest number of streaming hours on Roku of any state, followed by Alabama, Kentucky, Arkansas, and West Virginia. January saw more binge-watching than any other period of the year, as more than 33% of watching sessions lasted eight hours or longer during the month.
Roku also found that the average Roku-using household streamed TV across nine different apps in 2025, with three of those being free to watch. Considering that the Roku had 90 million streaming customers as of the end of 2024, its data can hardly be considered a small sample size.
Turning to TV, Roku found that younger viewers were turning increasingly to adult animation. Roku found that nearly two-thirds of Roku searches from Gen Z adults were for anime, adult animation, or “animated films with cult-like followings,” not the standard animated fare made for a younger audience. But among all audiences, “Love Island” was the most-searched show on Roku platforms over the summer; searches for the series grew 180% over the previous season.
In the land of cinema, original horror was a big winner in 2025. “Sinners” more than doubled the search volume of the next-highest horror title, and the genre grew 20% year-over-year thanks to such movies. And in the land of sports, searches for pro wrestling grew by 275%, becoming the fastest-growing sport on the platform.
This data isn’t just fascinating for the average reader; it’s also data that advertisers will use to craft their campaigns more effectively. It means that Roku users might start seeing more ads for streaming services where they can watch pro wrestling, or that younger viewers could soon see more targeted spots for adult animation. It won’t lead to a let-up in advertising for any demographic, but it could lead to more targeted and less intrusive — or at any rate less unwanted — ads going forward.
Roku Channel
The Roku Channel is a free, ad-supported streaming service that offers a broad mix of movies, TV shows, live linear channels, and original programming. Available to all viewers — not just Roku device owners — the service features licensed content from major studios alongside Roku Originals, which include exclusive series, movies, and specials previously produced for Quibi, as well as new original projects developed specifically for the platform.