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donp88
Channel Surfer

Roku making BIG BUCKS off publishers

Interesting article I read today on variety.com, albeit old still makes me shake my head: 

Roku generated close to $400 million in revenue in 2016 — and not all of this came from hardware sales: The company’s media and licensing business, which includes ad sales on Roku channels as well as the money Roku charges channel operators to get featured on the platform, brought in more that $100 million in revenue last year alone.
The streaming device maker also highlighted a few other metrics in a media release Tuesday, pointing out that the company now has more than 13.4 million active accounts. Those users streamed more than 1 billion hours of music and video in December alone, with streams totaling 9 billion hours in all of 2016.
Roku previously said that its users had streamed 5.5 billion hours of content in 2015. The company didn’t release any revenue numbers for 2015, but estimates had pegged the company’s revenue for that year at $275 million to $300 million.  Source: variety.com

I love the part underlined above.  They've been raking in the money, but publishers such as myself have yet to see a single dime on ads I have ran for them.

Here is the latest from Roku in case any of you publishers haven't been in the loop:

Dec 5th -

Regarding ad revenue - we have been integrating new systems, and are working hard to resolve payment delays. Our goal is to establish a system in which all payments are distributed with accuracy, and in a timely manner. Future questions about advertising revenue may be directed to [email=publisheradservices@roku.com:3is3fqim]publisheradservices@roku.com[/email:3is3fqim].  
Someone from the Ads team will follow up with you as soon as an update is available.  Our sincere apologies for the delay and limited information at this time.

It's been a over a year Roku.  You need money to operate as a business, so do your publishers.  Pay up. 
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4 REPLIES 4
rovidx_media
Roku Guru

Re: Roku making BIG BUCKS off publishers

Should have phrased it "making big bucks by not paying it's advertising partners".     It's been over a month since we were supposed to be paid.   Last communication I got from them sounded like they lost a bunch of channels revenue reports because they asked me to provide proof of impressions.    I sent over the daily impression report that RokuCo sends me (why don't they have access to this?) and it clearly shows they owe us for Q3, not to mention what they will owe us for Q4.
Use Wordpress to power your Roku Direct Publisher (& other platforms) -> https://rovidx.com
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mosafer
Roku Guru

Re: Roku making BIG BUCKS off publishers

I always had problem with impression report and video played in my channel.
Long story short, impression report shows almost 1/10 of the real advertise that I predicted from my side.
on top of that for past couple of days my impression report shows only single digit ads!!! while my viewers watched more than 300,000 minutes of content per day.
something is really wrong here.
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37mediagroup
Roku Guru

Re: Roku making BIG BUCKS off publishers

Pretty sure ads don't always play when videos are watched, so # of videos watched or minutes watched is not an accurate number to be looking at. Imho that can help keep viewers interested in the channel, without being hampered with an abundance of ads. I'm pretty sure the payout is $14 for every 1000 ads played, then there's a 60/40 split. In general we're talking peanuts for alot of our channels, I thought I saw someone claims thousands here, unless you're channel in monstrous in first 6 months I think the math might be wrong. Still, I agree I'd like to get a payment or at least a concise $ amount, rather than me ballparking it. I plan on sending an email after January 15th since I likely again won't be paid out yet. I'll keep you all posted.

Still, let's be grateful Roku has given us small channel concepts builders, forward thinkers, and early adopters a chance at this, and easy working solutions. The money in the article is high, but it reads the $100 million is 'the money Roku charges channel operators to get featured on the platformso that in itself is not entirely all ad revenue, they charge channels for things like default placement in the preinstalled channels, quick button on remote control etc. Also I'm pretty sure they air a small % of RAF ads even on channels that use their own ad servers, CBSN, Crackle, NBC etc.  There's a thing called the 80/20 split here, where probably a few channels bring in 80% of Rokus revenue, and the thousands of us small channels probably bring in 20%.Still its a good chunk of change, and we deserve our revenue, hopefully we get resolution to it and a clearer picture as to the payout situation. On the flip side tho consumers are buying the Rokus for the Netflix, PBS, Pandora's etc & we're all earning via long coat tails.
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rovidx_media
Roku Guru

Re: Roku making BIG BUCKS off publishers

"Pasnow" wrote:
Pretty sure ads don't always play when videos are watched, so # of videos watched or minutes watched is not an accurate number to be looking at. Imho that can help keep viewers interested in the channel, without being hampered with an abundance of ads. I'm pretty sure the payout is $14 for every 1000 ads played, then there's a 60/40 split. In general we're talking peanuts for alot of our channels, I thought I saw someone claims thousands here, unless you're channel in monstrous in first 6 months I think the math might be wrong. Still, I agree I'd like to get a payment or at least a concise $ amount, rather than me ballparking it. I plan on sending an email after January 15th since I likely again won't be paid out yet. I'll keep you all posted.

Still, let's be grateful Roku has given us small channel concepts builders, forward thinkers, and early adopters a chance at this, and easy working solutions. The money in the article is high, but it reads the $100 million is 'the money Roku charges channel operators to get featured on the platformso that in itself is not entirely all ad revenue, they charge channels for things like default placement in the preinstalled channels, quick button on remote control etc. Also I'm pretty sure they air a small % of RAF ads even on channels that use their own ad servers, CBSN, Crackle, NBC etc.  There's a thing called the 80/20 split here, where probably a few channels bring in 80% of Rokus revenue, and the thousands of us small channels probably bring in 20%.Still its a good chunk of change, and we deserve our revenue, hopefully we get resolution to it and a clearer picture as to the payout situation. On the flip side tho consumers are buying the Rokus for the Netflix, PBS, Pandora's etc & we're all earning via long coat tails.


First off, I have impression reports stating how many ads played. And, yes, they owe me thousands at this point. If you have a successful channel, you would know those numbers aren't that outlandish.

Secondly I am more than happy to give credit to Roku for what they do. However when they owe you thousands of dollars and your business is having a hard time to stay open, it doesn't give you much to be happy about.
Use Wordpress to power your Roku Direct Publisher (& other platforms) -> https://rovidx.com
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