How and Why to Expand your Online TV Network to Roku?
Traditional TV is dying and the devices that are putting the nail in the coffin are small little boxes that connect to your living room TV set. Roku is a fiercely competitive little device that connects through WIFI to the internet and allows you to view video content on your TV, including content from YouTube and Netflix.
Besides the usual Netflix and YouTube, there are a few thousand other channels to choose from and with a viewing audience that is constantly expanding (well over 60 million), it has more viewers than most cable operators combined.
Roku provides your network with great potential and opportunity to reach new audiences. The opportunity to reach new audiences with your new Roku channel is not only exciting, but easier to do than ever before in history.
Roku’s most important metrics indicate a growing and healthy viewership.
In fact, streaming hours increased 68% in the fourth quarter of 2018 to over 7.3 billion. But Roku has moved past just promoting its streaming device that connects to your TV.
More viewers are now coming from licensed sources; specifically Roku’s operating system, which is one of the most popular among Smart TV operating systems among consumers.
Roku estimated that 25% of smart TVs sold in the first three quarters of 2018 came with Roku’s operating system pre-installed.
Roku’s expansion into the smart TV world is fantastic for broadcasters because Roku’s continuous exposure and growth is also growing online broadcasters’ audience base. Roku’s broad audience gives broadcasters in any niche an opportunity to reach a large audience and following.
That’s far more valuable to online network owners because advertisers are willing to pay a much higher rate for content viewed on a living room TV set versus watching on a mobile device.
The only Smart TV operating system with a greater market share is Samsung, however, even Roku is perusing deals with them as well.
Last year, Roku partnered with Samsung to enable Samsung Smart TV viewers to connect and stream content from their Roku Channel.
The ever-constant expansion of Roku is exactly why many of our customers choose to expand to Roku as part of their distribution platform. When our broadcasters choose to expand to Roku, we simply integrate it into their Channel Manager account.
Our Channel Manager is the core of any online TV network that we deploy for our customers. It allows our broadcasters to create and schedule playlists, create VOD categories and assign videos to each category (like Netflix) as well as broadcast live and automatically record your live broadcast for inclusion into your playlist or VOD library.
Expanding onto Roku is pretty easy if you have our channel manager and you can broadcast simultaneously to not only your Roku channel but any distribution platform that you have (Amazon FireTV, Apple TV, Samsung Smart TV, iPhone, your website and Android).
We also provide a tool so you can re-stream your live broadcast (or playlist) to social media simultaneously.
If you would like to get a subscription to our Channel Manager, click on the link below.