Content engagement overview
Roku offers a robust promotional toolset for app publishers. This includes several free programs for organically driving content discovery such as Roku Search, Instant Signup, and Featured Free. These programs provide a high ROI as they typically require a simple integration and no economics.
Additionally, apps can further increase their exposure by leveraging Roku's audience development programs such as self-serve Roku home screen display ads, on-device promotions (targeted display and video ads, microsites, remote control buttons), and off-device email marketing messages. These programs actively recommend content in your app to users that are most likely to be engaged by it.
Using these promotional tools enables apps to maximize the value of their content by increasing installations, engagement, and revenue via subscriptions, purchases/rentals, and ads. This document highlights these tools.
Roku Search
Roku Search aggregates content from participating apps into a single, indexed search feed. It enables users to quickly find and watch content by entering or saying the name of a movie, TV show, or actor/actress instead of having to browse through individual apps. By participating in Roku Search, any content in your app that matches a query is automatically listed in the search results. This provides opportunities to convert searches into subscriptions and rentals, drive users to your app, and increase engagement.
See Implementing Roku Search to integrate your app into Roku Search.
By participating in Roku Search, your app is eligible for three more discovery programs that provide additional exposure: Visual Search Results for Roku Voice, Roku Zones and My Feed.
Visual Search Results for Roku Voice
The Roku UI displays content matching users' voice requests for a movie, TV show, short-form video, or other content when outside an app.
If a user requests content on a specific app (for example, "Bob the Builder on The Roku Channel" or "find Bob the Builder on The Roku Channel"), the Roku UI opens a page with matching content from that app in the top row. The rows below list relative Roku Zones and TV shows, movies, and short-form videos from other apps in the Roku platform that are participating in Roku Search.
If the voice request does not include a specific app (for example, "Bob the Builder" or "find Bob the Builder"), the Roku UI just displays the relative content from apps in the Roku platform that are participating in Roku Search.
When the user selects a content item, the content details screen provides options for playing the item (from free or subscription apps).
This feature is currently available to customers in the United States only.
Roku Zones
Roku Zones provides a curated selection of relevant content from apps across the Roku platform and organizes the content into browsable rows such as new releases, free titles, rentals and so on. It lets users find content and apps related to a specific genre or topic. For example, search results for "Sports" could include a "News and Sports Zone" that lists relevant apps with news and sports-related content; search results for "Love" could include a "Romance Movies & TV Zone" zone that lists curated romance-related movies and TV shows.
Save List
When customers search for content, they can add the movies and TV shows that they find to their Save List. They can they access their saved content by navigating to the What to Watch screen, which includes a Save List content row.
Instant Signup
Instant Signup enables users to start free trial subscriptions with just a few clicks when activating their Roku devices, and then directly access content on the app without any additional steps. This provides SVOD apps using Roku Pay an opportunity to offer free trials and related promotions to customers for their subscription services in order to drive conversions to paid subscriptions.
See Instant Signup to integrate your SVOD app into this program.
Featured Free
The Featured Free page, which is directly accessible from the Roku home screen, is the go-to destination for free content on the Roku platform. It lets users quickly find content that they can begin watching without having to first sign in. TVE, AVOD, and other apps can make their content directly accessible from the Featured Free page to drive traffic to their apps and promote upcoming live events.
To participate in Featured Free, apps must have already implemented Roku Search, and their content to be included in the program may not require a subscription, authentication, payment, or any other terms.
Audience development
Roku offers tools to engage with your existing and potential audiences within the Roku ecosystem and via our off-platform partnerships. In addition, Roku has a dedicated team of campaign managers committed to providing best-in-class support and performance-driven results, with a strong focus on retaining users to create more lifetime value for the publishers on our platform. You can work with a campaign manager to leverage the following audience development programs:
- User acquisition via device activation.
- On-device promotions.
- Off-device promotions.
Publishers interested in learning more about these opportunities can visit the Publisher Solutions page on our advertising site.
In addition, Roku offers self-serve tools that you can use to purchase display ads on the Roku home screen and gain insights on your app's performance.
Roku home screen display ads
Apps can purchase targeted display ads that appear on the Roku home screen to the right of the My Channels section. This provides apps with an opportunity to target specific groups of Roku users with relevant ads in order to increase their visibility on the Roku platform and drive engagement and sign-ups.
See Self-Serve Promotions for more information on purchasing display ads on the Roku home screen.
Analytics and reporting
Roku provides apps with a robust suite of reports for analyzing app performance, including dashboards for app engagement, transactions, payments, and more.
See Analytics and Reporting for more information.