Providing market intelligence for more than 35 years

In The News

Wall Street isn’t sure Roku can lead cord cutters to the promised land

One of the secrets of Roku's success has been its expansion beyond its roots as a set top box maker (a term the company tries to avoid). To do this, Roku CEO Anthony Wood built a loyal customer following by moving the company away from only selling its own boxes, instead now licensing its software to TV makers, so they can ship screens with the company's streaming TV platform built-in. This is a much higher margin business than selling streaming hardware, and almost one-third of so-called smart TVs sold last year included Roku's software.

Roku has also developed and licensed streaming programming of its own, backed by advertising. The Roku Channel, available on all its platforms, was 2019's most popular ad-backed streaming channel, ahead of rivals Pluto TV and Crackle, according to market research firm Parks Associates. That's another business that yields higher margins than producing set top boxes.

From the article "Wall Street isn’t sure Roku can lead cord cutters to the promised land" by Aaron Pressman.

Previously In The News

Password Sharing Not the Biggest Problem for SVOD Services, Study Says

For movie and TV studios, the big bugaboo is people illegally copying or downloading their IP. For SVOD services, it’s another form of piracy – password sharing, which cost companies $500 million worl...

OTT Sees Healthy Gains In Broadband Homes

Parks’ OTT Video Market Tracker also shows that Netflix, WWE Network and Hulu have the highest word-of-mouth consumer promotion scores. Parks looked at consumer behavior during Q3 2014 and compared...

Share A Netflix Password, Go To Jail?

According to a study done by Parks Associates in 2015, 57% of U.S. households access an over-the-top video account, meaning streaming services like Netflix, Hulu or HBO Go, but 11% of Netflix subscrib...

Has Subscription OTT Growth Hit Its Peak?

Parks Associates‘ OTT video research finds household spending on subscription OTT video services has held steady for three years, averaging just under $8 per month since 2016. From the article "Has...