S. Charles Lee, the architect of hundreds of ornate Art Deco movie theaters, had a famous saying about his goal of attracting audiences before they settled into their seats: “The show begins on the sidewalk.”
A century later, streaming services are taking a similar tack, taking advantage of their new place in the American living room by welcoming viewers with home-screen advertising. As they anticipate the start of their streaming programming, marketers generally find that viewers are more open to advertising messages. Early providers of home screen ads include several platforms that invested in free ad-supported streaming, including Roku, Vizio, and Amazon Fire TV. And as ads become a more crucial part of the major subscription players’ strategies, they’re also starting to appear in some of those previously brand-free environments.
For both viewers and advertisers, “There’s nothing better to put on your home screen than a video when you come to watch it,” Sweta Patel, vice president of marketing and merchandising, said in an interview.
Home screen ads were a featured topic at NewFronts earlier this spring and have been on the menu this week at the Cannes Lions marketing conference. It’s not a discrete category in any advertising revenue report, but the premium rates it is said to command add to the overall momentum of the streaming advertising business.
In a report this spring, the Interactive Advertising Bureau said that total advertising spending on digital video, including connected TV, social video and online video (OLV), is projected to grow 16% in 2024. That’s almost 80% faster than the total media in general. Over the past four years, the share of advertising spending has shifted by almost 20 percentage points from linear television to digital video, now representing 52% of the total market share. CTV, the category that includes streaming, is expected to grow 12% to $22.7 billion in 2024. That’s 32% faster than media overall, and 31% of the spending increase comes from general expansion of advertising budgets.
At Roku’s NewFronts presentation to advertisers last April, Patel took the stage to tout a new part of the company’s inventory: “featured ads.” Traditionally a static position, ads reaching households of approximately 120 million people will now be able to include video. So far, the response has been positive, Patel said, although he acknowledged that keeping them “pleasant” to viewers rather than intrusive remains a key goal. Several top advertisers have signed on, and Coca-Cola is sponsoring the “All Things Food” center, which includes the home screen and “marquee” positions. An integration into “Roku City,” the company’s signature screen saver, included a Spotify plug-in for Taylor Swift’s latest album.
The broader premise fueling Roku’s interest in utilizing the prime real estate of its home screen is the company’s presentation of itself as “the introduction to television.” Head of content Charlie Collier opened NewFront standing next to Archie Bunker’s chair from Everyone in the family, noting that CBS’s introduction of a massive hit like that would automatically benefit from the show’s weekly viewership, which in turn would increase advertisers’ reach. Roku, he maintained, works similarly. “Viewers in the Roku experience engage in our elevated, uncluttered advertising environment long before they disperse to apps, networks and paywalls,” she said.
As platforms explore new horizons for advertising, subscription players are also looking to innovate. A head of advertising sales at a major streaming operator whose main business model is subscription believes that ads will soon become more noticeable on many paid services. “If you look at how many brand integrations there are, especially in the unscripted space, it seems inevitable that the home screen will become a sweetener in those discussions,” the executive told Deadline, requesting anonymity given that the strategy is in an initial stage. .
Hulu has a prominent position on your home screen, below your main carousel, reserved for sponsored material. Fox game show The contest with balls has had a foothold there recently, with rolling stock announcements released before viewers see a trailer.
Major smart TV makers Vizio and Samsung have also been emphasizing their scale and home screen opportunities. Allison Clarke, director of General Market and National Advertising Sales at Vizio, said during the company’s NewFronts presentation that sponsor relationships have become “much more than just the placement of a logo: they are opportunities to integrate into the viewer’s journey. Home Screen She told advertisers that Vizio’s Home Screen is “their new distribution vehicle, giving them prime placement alongside the Hollywood heavyweights.” The company, which is in the process of being acquired by Walmart, is also leveraging a branded content studio it launched last year. Home Depot backed a Christmas-themed renovation series hosted by singer Jordin Sparks, with episodes promoted on the Vizio home screen.
A streaming player whose consumption premise is based entirely on combining ads with programming from the moment the “on” button is pressed is Telly. The startup, founded by one of the co-founders of Pluto TV, makes dual-screen TVs with a main screen dedicated to programming and a smaller companion panel dedicated to ads. Telly gave away half a million 55-inch TVs when it exited beta in 2023 as a bid to quickly gain scale.
Dallas Lawrence, the company’s chief strategy officer and former Roku and Samba TV executive, told Deadline that Telly’s research attests that consumers have “embraced a dual-screen lifestyle when it comes to watching TV.” More than 8 in 10, he noted, “regularly use a mobile device to search for movie reviews, purchase goods or services, order food delivery, check sports scores or catch up on the latest news while watching television.” Instead of leaving those interactions on a mobile device sitting on the couch, Telly brings them to “the biggest screen in the home,” Lawrence added.
