Roku reported its second quarterly earnings report ever, since becoming a publicly traded company. Andre Swanston, CEO of Tru Optik, an audience measurement and data management platform for OTT, was with us to share why he thinks Roku is positioned for success.
Swanston said the OTT space is "so wild" in terms of the growth in penetration and time spent. On top of that, he said most of that growth is on ad supported platforms, not services like Netflix. This bodes well for Roku because they are the only pure-play OTT company on the street, Swanston said.
Roku debuted a licensing program for smart audio devices and expects the first to ship this fall. They're going up against Amazon, Google, and Apple. Swanston said Roku has no strategic advantage for a smart speaker and does not anticipate it being a significant revenue generator.
Jack Daniels was at the U.S. Supreme Court today. The whiskey-makers argued that a dog toy company violated federal trademark law with a product that parodies the distiller's iconic bottle. The toy is the Bad Spaniels Silly Squeaker toy by VIP products. The first amendment case pits the rights of a famous trademark holder against parody products. Jack Daniel says the toy damages its reputation, especially the references to dog poop.
Alcohol brand White Claw is moving into spirits amid an industrywide shift away from hard seltzers. The spiked seltzer brand announced a new line of regular and flavored White Claw premium vodkas. The bottles are available in select markets across North America and come in an unflavored option as well as pineapple mango and black cherry white Claw has dominated the Heart Seltzer market for years. Now bringing the category into the mainstream as more consumers sought those low calorie alcohol drinks.
Stocks are holding relatively steady Wednesday as Wall Street bides its time until the Federal Reserve’s announcement in the afternoon about whether it will tighten the screws further on the economy.
Meme stocks are rising before the opening bell Wednesday after GameStop, one of the most heavily traded off-brand stocks during the pandemic, posted a surprise profit for the fourth quarter.
The rising cost of groceries is pushing more consumers to use Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) services for necessities such as groceries, according to new data from Adobe Analytics.