Roku TV units include adverts. Typically, these are restricted to Roku’s residence and menu screens, its screensavers, and its first-party video channels, and when you begin enjoying video, the one adverts you will see are those from the service you are streaming from. That mentioned, Roku TVs have proven adverts atop stay TV earlier than.
Now, the corporate is seemingly experimenting with methods to point out adverts over prime of much more of the belongings you plug into your TV. A patent from noticed by Lowpass describes a system for displaying adverts over any system linked over HDMI, an inventory that would embody cable packing containers, sport consoles, DVD or Blu-ray gamers, PCs, and even different video streaming units. Roku filed for the patent in August 2023 and it was revealed in November 2023, although it hasn’t but been granted.
The know-how described would detect whether or not content material was paused in a number of methods—if the video being displayed is static, if there is no audio being performed, if a pause image is proven anyplace on display screen, or if (on a TV with HDMI-CEC enabled) a pause sign has been acquired from some passthrough distant management. The system would analyze the paused picture and use metadata “to establish a number of objects” within the video body, transmit that identification data to a community, and obtain and show a “related advert” over prime of regardless of the paused content material is.
Roku
This theoretical Roku TV’s inner {hardware} could be able to taking the unique supply video feed, rendering an advert, after which combining the 2 right into a single displayed picture. Combining these video streams may allow each static or animated adverts, in accordance with the patent.
Patents are simply patents. A filed and granted patent isn’t the identical factor as a concrete plan to really implement the know-how described within the patent. We may see this characteristic come to future Roku TV units precisely as described, or we may by no means hear about it once more. All the things from the price of implementing the characteristic, to problem making it work in actual life the best way it really works on paper, to consumer and associate backlash may dissuade Roku from placing this into apply.
However Roku the corporate is extremely motivated to determine extra methods to earn more money from extra adverts on Roku units. Among the many enterprise dangers disclosed on Roku’s monetary filings from its 2023 fiscal yr (PDF), the corporate says that its “future development is dependent upon the acceptance and development of streaming TV promoting and promoting platforms.”
Roku
If applied as described, this method each provides Roku one other place to place adverts, and offers the corporate one other supply of consumer information that can be utilized to encourage advertisers to spend on its platforms. Roku additionally anticipates that the overall shift towards ad-supported streaming tiers that we have seen within the final couple of years will “shift… advert {dollars} from conventional TV to streaming,” (PDF) and having extra locations to place adverts will put Roku in a greater place to capitalize on that shift.
It is unclear whether or not this sort of characteristic could possibly be enabled on presently supported Roku TVs with a software program replace, or if it might require a more moderen set with newer {hardware} in it. It appears as if a Roku TV that was able to this sort of advert insertion would wish extra refined inner {hardware} than most present units presently include—this is similar firm that feuded with Google a couple of years again as a result of it did not wish to pay for more-expensive chips that would decode Google’s AV1 video codec.
