As Its Original Content Strategy Pays Off, Roku Plans to Double Down in 2022

Roku kicked off 2021 by expanding into the original programming space—acquiring global rights in January to 75 shows from shuttered shortform streamer Quibi. As the platform comes off its biggest year in company history, it plans to double-down on its originals strategy in 2022. “With the Quibi acquisition, that really propelled us into the scripted and unscripted originals game and gave us a great set of content to help to set a foundation for a portion of our go forward strategy,” Rob Holmes, Roku’s vp of programming, told Adweek. In the third quarter, Roku grew to 56.4 million accounts and reached 18 billion streaming hours. The Roku Channel, its AVOD offering which also is home to its growing Roku Originals, has seen a significant usage increase as well, doubling streaming hours year over year every quarter for the last eight quarters. Roku's Quibi bet paid off almost immediately. In the first two weeks after 30 Quibi-turned-Roku-Originals debuted in May, more active accounts streamed them on The Roku Channel than the number of Quibi accounts did in the entirety of that streamer’s brief eight-month lifespan. Roku Changes the AVOD Game by Turning Quibi’s Lemons Into Lemonade Now, Roku Originals are some of the most popular programs on the platform, with over a third of overall Roku Channel viewers watching the content. And according to Holmes, Roku’s top 20 advertisers report that 87% of their campaign reach within Roku Originals was an unduplicated audience compared to their traditional linear campaigns. “It's a great add experience for users, it's great ad value for our advertisers, tying back in this portfolio of content with the originals, just providing another layer of differentiation and a great compelling opportunity for everybody,” said Holmes. The company acquired This Old House in March as part of an expansive content strategy, and that programming has seen a 50% increase in viewership—and drawn in new advertisers as well. “I think that's just a really crisp illustration of what we call the flywheel, which is, content brings viewership, brings advertisers, brings more content," said Holmes. Following the Quibi acquisition as the foundation of Roku’s original-content strategy, the connected TV platform released its first original movie last week, Zoey’s Extraordinary Christmas, following that show's cancellation by NBC earlier this year. “It’s a really phenomenal capstone to the year,” said Holmes. “And then it sets a great foundation for us going forward where we're going to continue to do more of this portfolio of content with a great set of partners that are going to continue to bring us great content" as well as "a nice level of original investment to bring something new to our users over the next 24 months.” Roku Originals like Reno 9-1-1 and Die Hart are resonating with users, but overall consumers are finding more content to engage with across its original offerings. The company is finding particular success with comedy, bringing back Punk’d, hosted by Chance the Rapper for Season 2, debuting Dec. 10, and ordered a Season 2 of the cooking competition Dishmantled, premiering Dec. 31. 'People love free content' One of the bigger surprises for Roku since its venture into original content was the scale of the appetite consumers have for AVOD content. While SVOD services like Netflix and Disney+ have dominated the streaming narrative in recent years, “people love free content," said Holmes. "Every time we make great, free content available in a fashion that's easy to use, we see consumers engage.” For Roku, FAST (free ad-supported streaming TV) also falls under the AVOD bucket, and is becoming increasingly important to the company’s content model. The Roku Channel expanded its live programming lineup to more than 200 channels this year, most recently adding Vevo today. “I think FAST is a really important trend, and it’s one of these things where I think if you ask people two or three years ago what the future of linear TV was, I think they would have said the future of linear TV as the same as the future of cable,” said Holmes. “What we're seeing with the FAST trend is that it wasn't that linear wasn't a compelling consumer use case, it was that cable was too expensive.” 50 more originals on the way Heading into 2022, Roku doesn’t have any plans to slow down. “We want to continue to build on the foundation that we have here, so there's not sort of one specific direction that we're going in,” said Holmes. “We're going to bring more partners on board, and we'll bring more content with more partners. It’s certainly a strategy that's worked for us.” The company plans to develop more than 50 original shows over the next two years as part of its overall content strategy. “It’s an approach that we are entering to in a balanced way,” said Holmes. “I think we can be more creative and expansive with the investments that we're making, given the results that we're seeing: the user interest, the advertiser interest.” While the former Quibi originals are short-form, Roku is seeing users consume that shows more like traditional television—according to Holmes, they are watching three to five 10-minute episodes in one sitting, mimicking a more traditional TV episode length—influencing the company’s future plans to develop more long-form content. “Our belief generally is that that the longer form, longer-run content is going to be more of the model for us going forward,” added Holmes. “We may continue to do some of the kind of Quibi-style content as a continuation of those existing shows, but generally speaking, we're going to be looking more at what you view as standard TV length.”