Roku is swiftly becoming among the most volatile stocks in the Cheddar 50. Shares of the streaming-device maker were down 26 percent last week, shaken by announcements from Facebook and Comcast that they were offering new streaming products as the pace of cord-cutting in the U.S. intensifies. Still, Roku shares remain up more than 250 percent year-to-date.
It is amid that shakeup that Roku on Monday announced a new partnership with the marketing platform Innovid to provide more in-depth measurements of OTT audiences.
Scott Rosenberg, senior vice president of Roku's platform business, made the announcement on Cheddar. He told Cheddar's Michelle Castillo that the "first-to-market" partnership "is designed to help brands plan, and better migrate their spending into streaming."
Despite streaming video taking up more of a share of "TV time" in U.S. households ー 30 percent of time spent watching video content on television is now happening via an OTT service rather than a traditional cable box ー just 3 percent of brands' advertising budgets is being spent on streaming.
That's because the analytics and measurement technology is still in its infancy compared to the Nielsen ratings that measure traditional TV audiences. Roku is hoping, with the Innovid deal, to help bring more data to brands who may want to increase spending on streaming but aren't sure who and how many people they are reaching, Rosenberg said.
Eventually, streaming ads will be able to merge the "sight, sound, and motion" of traditional TV commercials with digital innovations like interactivity, precise measurability, and targeting, he said.
In its most recent annual report on cord-cutting, Roku predicted that streaming TV viewers could surpass traditional pay TV viewers in five years. And given that most OTT households pay for at least one service, like Netflix or Hulu, the ad-supported streaming model is going to become a bigger part of the TV diet of many viewers, Rosenberg said. He noted that 75 percent of Roku customers already watch at least one ad-supported service on the Roku platform.
"This is a pretty clear indicator that the value proposition of watching something for free in exchange for being exposed to ads is a sound proposition," he said. "Even in this new world."
Swedish buy now, pay later company Klarna is making its highly anticipated public debut on the New York Stock Exchange Wednesday, the latest in a run of high-profile initial public offerings this year. The offering priced at $40 Tuesday, above the forecasted range of $35 to $37 a share, valuing the company at more than $15 billion. The valuation easily makes Klarna one of the biggest IPOs so far in 2025, which has been one of the busier years for companies going public. Other popular IPOs so far this year include the design software company Figma and Circle Internet Group, which issues the USDC stablecoin..
Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison wrested the title of the world’s richest man from longtime holder Elon Musk early Wednesday as stock in his software giant rocketed more than a third in a stunning few minutes of trading. That is according to wealth tracker Bloomberg. A college dropout, the 81-year-old Ellison is now worth $393 billion, Bloomberg says, several billion more than Musk, who had been the world’s richest for four years. The switch in the ranking came after a blockbuster earnings report from Oracle. Forbes still has Musk as the richest, however, valuing his private businesses much higher.
Aurimas Sabulis, CEO of Dextall, unveils how AI‑driven prefabricated façades slash design time by 80%, labor by 87%, and accelerate affordable housing delivery.
Online broker Robinhood Markets will join the S&P 500 index Online broker Robinhood Markets will join the S&P 500 index as its stock rides higher on a cryptocurrency wave.
Trump wants interest rates to plummet to make borrowing cheaper and boost growth. Fed chair Jerome Powell and his allies say not so fast, they need to bala
