Roku, RTL AdAlliance and the Evolution of Streaming

As the streaming sector reaches a new stage and the world’s biggest media companies vie for attention on their platforms, user experience is suffering as viewers have to flip between platform after platform—while also paying for the seemingly unlimited number of emerging platforms. This fragmentation is also making it more challenging for advertisers to connect with audiences. Mike Shaw of Roku and Franck Litewka of RTL AdAlliance joined Adweek’s Lucinda Southern during Brandweek Europe to discuss what can be done to create a simpler, less fragmented streaming experience.

Navigating the fragmented landscape

As the streaming ecosystem becomes increasingly fragmented as more players enter the game, Shaw has hope that in the near future, we’ll start to come out on the other side and enter a more cohesive streaming environment.

“We’re moving further down the trough of fragmentation, but at some point, we’ll start to see more alliances around single buying points, more standardization around measurement and delivery of campaigns, and the ability to reconcile results,” he explained.

Simplifying streaming

With the AV market in a transitional phase, Shaw and Litewka agree that the next big challenge for the industry is to bring more simplicity to viewers accessing content while providing advertisers with fewer technological silos.

“I think it’s just a bad user experience when you switch on your TV set and you have a selection of platforms, but the linear channels are on another side, so you have to continuously switch from one to the other,” Litewka said. “So there’s a big gap between the CTV environment and the CTV experience, and it’s also reflected on the buy side.”

The future of AVOD

According to Shaw, to come out on top of the ever-intensifying streaming wars, marketers should look to ad-supported content.

“We see a very bright future in the ad-supported content world,” Shaw said. “SVODs aren’t going anywhere, but we see a very clear path for co-existence with a strong TV ad ecosystem, and I think the opportunity we have through technological advances in television is that we’re going to be able to do more things with that.”