Roku TV units include advertisements. Usually, these are restricted to Roku’s house and menu screens, its screensavers, and its first-party video channels, and when you begin enjoying video, the one advertisements you may see are those from the service you are streaming from. That stated, Roku TVs have proven advertisements atop stay TV earlier than.
Now, the corporate is seemingly experimenting with methods to indicate advertisements over prime of much more of the belongings you plug into your TV. A patent software from the corporate noticed by Lowpass describes a system for displaying advertisements over any machine linked over HDMI, a listing that might embrace cable containers, sport consoles, DVD or Blu-ray gamers, PCs, and even different video streaming gadgets. Roku filed for the patent in August 2023 and it was revealed in November 2023, although it hasn’t but been granted.
The know-how described would detect whether or not content material was paused in a number of methods—if the video being displayed is static, if there is no audio being performed, if a pause image is proven wherever on display, or if (on a TV with HDMI-CEC enabled) a pause sign has been obtained from some passthrough distant management. The system would analyze the paused picture and use metadata “to determine a number of objects” within the video body, transmit that identification data to a community, and obtain and show a “related advert” over prime of regardless of the paused content material is.
This theoretical Roku TV’s inside {hardware} can be able to taking the unique supply video feed, rendering an advert, after which combining the 2 right into a single displayed picture. Combining these video streams may allow each static or animated advertisements, in keeping with the patent.
Patents are simply patents. A filed and granted patent isn’t the identical factor as a concrete plan to really implement the know-how described within the patent. We may see this characteristic come to future Roku TV units precisely as described, or we may by no means hear about it once more. All the things from the price of implementing the characteristic, to issue making it work in actual life the best way it really works on paper, to person and associate backlash may dissuade Roku from placing this into observe.
However Roku the corporate is extremely motivated to determine extra methods to make more cash from extra advertisements on Roku gadgets. Among the many enterprise dangers disclosed on Roku’s monetary filings from its 2023 fiscal yr (PDF), the corporate says that its “future progress is determined by the acceptance and progress of streaming TV promoting and promoting platforms.”
If carried out as described, this technique each offers Roku one other place to place advertisements, and provides the corporate one other supply of person knowledge that can be utilized to encourage advertisers to spend on its platforms. Roku additionally anticipates that the overall shift towards ad-supported streaming tiers that we have seen within the final couple of years will “shift… advert {dollars} from conventional TV to streaming,” (PDF) and having extra locations to place advertisements will put Roku in a greater place to capitalize on that shift.
It is unclear whether or not this type of characteristic could possibly be enabled on at present supported Roku TVs with a software program replace, or if it will require a more moderen set with newer {hardware} in it. It appears as if a Roku TV that was able to this type of advert insertion would want extra refined inside {hardware} than most present units at present include—this is identical firm that feuded with Google a number of years again as a result of it did not wish to pay for more-expensive chips that might decode Google’s AV1 video codec.