On Sep 29 2022, Roku, America's No. 1 streaming media device company, announced the acquisition of Nielsen’s Advanced Video Advertising (AVA) business, which includes Nielsen’s video automatic content recognition (ACR) and dynamic ad insertion (DAI) technologies. In addition, Nielsen and Roku have entered into a long-term strategic partnership to enable a cross-screen measurement tool allowing advertisers to track viewership data across desktop, mobile, connected TV, and traditional TV. This brand new cross-screen solution is upon release in December.

When it comes to video streaming, the focus was used to be on streaming subscriber numbers, but now companies are looking at monetization. Facing new growth hurdles, some of the biggest players in streaming have been taking steps to launch ad-supported tiers; at the same time, marketers are looking forward to shifting more dollars to streaming as consumers are spending more time on SVOD. Roku sees its chance to become a central hub for video advertising. Up till now, it’s still challenging for companies to measure data across the many devices people use to consume streaming content. By acquiring Nielsen’s four-screen measurement tool Nielsen One, Roku aims to provide companies and marketers with “a consistent, comparable, and deduplicated view into the channels and platforms audiences consume, across screens”. A key element of this tool is eliminating (or deduplicating) redundant audience data so marketers can evaluate campaigns’ unique reach and frequency on multiple devices.

Besides the cross-media measurement solution, Roku’s ambition also includes addressable TV advertising – a new form of TV advertising where advertisers can target video ads to specific households. With an forthcoming end-to-end DAI solution, Roku is hoping to enable addressable TV ads where ad can be reached to assigned audiences while they are watching TV via on-demand, live-streaming, or linear viewing environments. U.S. spending on addressable TV advertising – still just a fraction of the total TV ad market – is expected to reach $4.2 billion by 2024, doubling its 2020 total of $2.14 billion, according to the 2022 report by eMarketer. Through the deal with Nielsen, Roku is angling to get a bigger piece of that pie.

When it comes to the business world of video streaming, Roku might not be the first name that pops up in people's minds. However, being the biggest supplier for streaming and TV-related devices in the U.S., Roku has more than 63 million active accounts using its platform to stream everything from live, linear television to streaming services like Netflix and Disney+. In 2021, Roku has also moved into original programming, launching its debut of 30 titles which Roku acquired from the short-form streaming service Quibi earlier this year.