Roku launched “Roku City Dash,” a game embedded in its Roku City screensaver, adding interactivity to its TV operating system. With over 100 million households, Roku continues to layer in interactive features, branded integrations, and event-driven experiences directly on the home screen.
Maximizing Revenue on YouTube: Strategies for Sustainable Growth - May 6th
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IAB Tech Lab Forms Industry Council to Address Programmatic Complexity
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15% Off StreamTV Show Registration
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TriCoast's Nick Risher On Why Owning The Content Changes The Math
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Hub: Consumers finding favor with AI-powered entertainment platforms
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How Roku Is Turning Its Operating System Into a Branded Engagement Layer
Roku launched “Roku City Dash,” a game embedded in its Roku City screensaver, adding interactivity to its TV operating system. With over 100 million households, Roku continues to layer in interactive features, branded integrations, and event-driven experiences directly on the home screen.
The Take
Roku is monetizing idle time and turning its OS into an engagement layer. Interactivity expands data, ad inventory, and frequency while lowering reliance on content. The home screen is evolving into a programmable environment where brands engage users directly through mechanics, not just media.
Read the Full Analysis: The Streaming Wars
Parks: Roku, Samsung are dominate connected TV platforms in U.S. homes
Roku and Samsung have maintained their market dominance when it comes to the connected television (CTV) platforms found in American homes, according to a new report released by Parks Associates this week.
The report is based on data pulled from Parks Associates’ proprietary Streaming Video Tracker, which shows Roku commands 28 percent of the CTV space in the U.S. while Samsung’s Tizen operating system is in a close second place at 23 percent. The figure includes smart TVs and standalone streaming devices; Roku makes both, while Tizen OS is only available on the company’s smart TVs and smart monitors.
Other dominant platforms in the U.S. include LG’s webOS, Amazon Fire TV and Vizio Smartcast, though Parks Associates didn’t offer specific data on the total share of those platforms.
Prior research released by Parks Associates during the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January showed Samsung had a commanding lead of smart TVs in U.S. homes at 34 percent, with LG webOS in second place, Vizio SmartCast ranking third and Roku TV fourth. That report didn’t count standalone streaming devices or smart monitors.
More comparable data was released last summer, when Parks Associates revealed Roku to have a 25 percent share of the CTV space, compared to Samsung Tizen OS’s 23 percent share. Amazon Fire TV ranked third at 17 percent and LG webOS fourth at 10 percent share.
No matter how you slice the data, the outcome is the same: A handful of CTV platforms backed by a few players control the largest share of the streaming space in American homes.
Read the Full Story: TheDesk.net
Maximizing Revenue on YouTube: Strategies for Sustainable Growth - May 6th
YouTube has rapidly evolved into one of the most powerful platforms for content distribution and monetization, offering creators, media companies, and digital-first brands a growing set of tools to drive meaningful and sustainable revenue.
Join Adam Rumanek, Founder & CEO of Aux Mode, and Paul Erickson, Principal Analyst at Omdia for a special OTT.X webinar on May 6th to gain a clearer understanding of how to turn a YouTube strategy into a more consistent and scalable revenue engine.
Key Takeaways
- A clear framework for optimizing content length and consistency to increase AdSense revenue
- Guidance on qualifying for and maximizing the YouTube Partner Program
- Insight into leveraging monetization tools like Super Chat and YouTube Shopping
- Practical tactics to deepen audience engagement and build a loyal community
- Proven approaches to attracting and securing valuable brand partnerships
Whether scaling an established content operation or continuing to grow a digital presence, this session will provide strategies to better monetize content and drive long-term growth on YouTube.
IAB Tech Lab Forms Industry Council to Address Programmatic Complexity
As automation and AI-powered tools continue to make their way into the U.S. digital advertising marketplace and processes, the IAB Tech Lab has formed a new industry working group to establish shared governance, defined standards and support greater transparency so that advertisers and publishers can adopt and utilize complex programmatic ad systems with more confidence.
Dubbed the Programmatic Governance Council, the body brings to gether media buyers, owners and ad tech platforms to coalesce and help shape concrete outputs around programmatic trading and transaction signals, with an aim of creating alignment across different stakeholders and improved transparency, trust and consistency.
Initial participants include Dentsu, Omnicom Media Group, WPP, Disney, Magnite, PubMatic, Hearst, News Corp, Yahoo, Amazon Ads, The Trade Desk, Raptive, and Mediavine, among others.
"Programmatic advertising moves billions of dollars every day, but too often the people responsible for it are not sitting together to deal with the real operational problems," said Anthony Katsur, CEO of IAB Tech Lab, in a statement. "Programmatic grew incredibly fast, but the governance around how that market should operate hasn't kept pace with its scale, complexity, and automation. If we don't generate alignment quickly, we risk cementing these inefficiencies into the fabric of every transaction."
Per IAB, more than $200 billion in U.S. digital advertising is now traded programmatically.
When it comes to TV advertising specifically, a recent CIMM panel noted roughly one-third of the ~$90 billion U.S. TV ad spend (across traditional linear and TV) in 2025 was transacted programmatically – with IP-inherent and digital-native CTV representing the large majority. On the same panel, leaders from Disney, Google and Dish all cited expectations for growth in programmatic by 2030 – and upticks for “automated” advertising transactions more broadly in different forms, as consumers, devices, and ad inventory continue to migrate to CTV and new ad tech, including AI, is integrated into systems.
Read the Full Story: StreamTV Insider
15% Off StreamTV Show Registration
OTT.X is proud to continue its partnership with the StreamTV Show, taking place in Denver June 16-19.
The event convenes senior leaders from streaming platforms, broadcasters, FAST operators, studios, advertisers, and technology providers to discuss the strategies and innovations shaping the future of streaming.
With dedicated tracks spanning content, advertising, and product and technology, StreamTV Show delivers executive-level insights alongside high-value networking opportunities with the companies driving the next phase of the streaming ecosystem.
As part of this partnership, OTT.X is pleased to offer 15% off registration for the StreamTV Show using code OTTX.
More Information & Registration: StreamTV Show
TriCoast's Nick Risher On Why Owning The Content Changes The Math
“We kind of accidentally fell into becoming an SSP. But what ended up making it work is that we started leveraging our library.”
TriCoast is one of those companies that makes more sense the longer you talk to them. On the surface, it’s a film distribution company with a big library and a handful of FAST channels. But somewhere along the way, it also became an ad-tech company—largely because it needed to sell its own inventory, then realized it could use that same model more broadly.
I spoke with TriCoast Media CEO Nick Risher about how that happened, why owning content changes the math, and how the company is trying to build a more direct path between publishers and buyers.
ALAN WOLK (AW): Let’s start at the beginning. How did a film distribution company wind up building an ad-tech business?
NICK RISHER (NR): TriCoast is a film distribution company with over 5,000 titles in our library. We also have four FAST channels, and we release about 12 films a year in theaters as well. But as we built channels like Dark Matter, we had to start our own ad sales team and our own ad network because we wanted to fill that inventory. We kind of accidentally fell into becoming an SSP. What ended up making it work was that we started leveraging our library.
AW: Walk me through that part—how are you leveraging the library?
NR: The way it works is that TriCoast Media Network provides content assets from our library to publishers. We leverage that content library and give publishers a cheaper rev share. In return for that reduced rate, we ask for reduced backfill—not just on our own content, but on all of their inventory.
So if it’s Tubi or Samsung or whoever, we’ll give them our titles, and instead of a higher tag we’re asking for a lower one. That comes back to TriCoast Media Network in the form of cheaper rates, so that we can sell it to demand partners. That’s the flywheel for us, and that’s what we’re excited to unveil.
AW: So where does the advantage come from in practical terms?
NR: The cheaper rev share enables the cheaper CPM while the publisher is still making the same money. They’re getting money from the better rev share, so they’re fine giving us cheaper CPMs on the backfill side. It’s very much a you-scratch-my-back, I-scratch-yours model.
Read the Full Story: TVREV
Hub: Consumers finding favor with AI-powered entertainment platforms
Consumers are warming up to entertainment and smart home platforms that are incorporating more artificial intelligence products, according to a new research study released on Monday.
The report, from Hub Entertainment Research, is based on a survey of more than 2,600 American consumers between the ages of 16 and 74 years old, and finds that more shoppers are willing to embrace AI-powered platforms if it makes everyday tasks easy like finding something to watch on television or controlling smart devices and appliances.
The findings point to a significant opportunity for connected home technology to expand beyond entertainment into areas like health, wellness and home security. Younger consumers, especially those under 35, are more likely to identify gaps in these categories and express interest in solutions that integrate seamlessly into daily life, Hub noted.
AI-enabled devices are seen as a key driver of that shift: Smartphones and TVs generate the strongest consumer interest when it comes to AI enhancements, outpacing larger home appliances, Hub noted. These devices are viewed as best positioned to link and organize services across the home, effectively serving as control centers for a growing number of connected experiences.
“TVs are the biggest screen and are best positioned to be ‘the brain’ to help coordinate things across the home,” said Jason Platt Zolov, a senior consultant for Hub and the study’s author. “Leading TV operating systems have an opportunity to develop enhanced AI-partnerships across devices that will only make consumers happier.”
A number of smart TV developers are already working to integrate more AI-powered products into their experiences. Google has taken the lead on this, incorporating Gemini across its product library, where it works alongside the Google Assistant to supercharge search, discovery and knowledge-based queries.
Read the Full Story: TheDesk.net
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