I love my Roku. As a Comcast subscriber I was able to take back my set top boxes and simply use the Comcast app on the Roku player to stream all my channels over the cloud.
More 4k Tv’s have licensed Roku operating system and the future of their business model is not selling it’s hardware but growing it’s customer account base and monetizing this base with advertising. Great article explains how to look at Roku.
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4180849-roku-beats-story-bi…
How is Roku monetizing with advertising? I have one Apple TV, one 4k Roku (because of the digital out), and 2 Roku 3s. One for each set or home theatre in the house. I only see ads on Roku for other streaming channels or for other TV shows. One ad on the home screen and thereafter may never see another thing.
I am not sure that you can monetize something like that, in that format, to the tune of billions of dollars of value.
Someone will have to straighten me out here on how that will work. Otherwise, I buy the device one time, less than $100 a device, and there are no other payments.
Tinker
Well Roku gets paid when you order a subscription just like Apple does when you buy an app in its App Store.
It also has the Roku channel where it has content from third parties that share advertising revenue.
This year this revenue totalled 75 million which was 100 percent growth from a year ago. They have 21 million people viewing content on the Roku platform which was 47% growth from last year.
The thought is that their will be more cord cutters going forward and Roku will be able to monetize these folks on their platform as advertising continues to move to these channels.
The key stat is out of the 21 million Roku users half of them have never subscribe to a platform like Comcast.
How does Comcast make money? Subscription revenue. How will Roku make money. Thru subscription and advertising thru it’s own Roku channels.
Their operating system is being built in to some 4K tv’s. So the revenue model will be similar to Netflix. Their stock price is tied to how many subscribers they get per quarter.
So will Roku. Except Roku doesn’t have to pay for the content. It just has to be bought in its app like platform. Hope that helps.
I still have issues with it. The vast majority of subscriptions will be on the most popular of services. Things like DirectTV Now, Sling, Netflix, Hulu, HBOTOGO, that sort of thing.
Where does Roku get the leverage to force these major players to pay a fee for each subscription? Roku is not going to sell many devices if it excludes the top channels.
Now I can see if someone signs up on the banner ad on the right at the home screen. That is pay per click, but getting a cut of the action just because someone otherwise signs up for the service?
Yes, Roku does have control over the preferred channels that come up when you look for a streaming channel. But again, that is an advertising placement.
As an avid streamer, currently in my home theatre streaming a movie, but as I get older I lose the patience just to sit through an entire show without taking a few mental diversions like this one, call me a skeptic.
Yes, viewer numbers should rise dramatically, that is true. I will need to dig deeper to see this business model. Subscriber numbers will be there. Roku is the best system, although Apple ain’t bad at all, and in some respects better, some respects not quite as good. My home theatre as the Apple TV. I moved the Roku 4 up to the living room because that set requires a digital in for best sound, whereas the lack of a digital out is irrelevant in the home theatre with the set up. I believe the picture and sound are actually a tad better on the Roku 4.
To monetize their viewers…they will have a lot of them. That is the gist of it all. I will give it a more in-depth look.
Tinker