Roku continues to shed its “walled garden” identity.
Yesterday, the company announced it was expanding its relationship—see this announcement from last year on how the companies have been working together to this point—with Comcast’s SSP FreeWheel to make all Roku app content, including The Roku Channel, available to FreeWheel’s DSP partners. The partnership also takes advantage of Roku’s recently launched Roku Exchange, which works to facilitate a clean set of connections between Roku inventory and the wider programmatic ecosystem.
Per the press release, Roku says, “By choosing FreeWheel, [it] gains access to its world-class technology and programmatic sophistication as well as the ability to leverage FreeWheel’s direct relationships with demand-side partners.” FreeWheel, of course, also wins here because it gives advertisers, through DSP partners, access to Roku’s audience of more than 85.5 million streaming households and its content.
Why This Matters:
This is all part of a larger push to open up Roku programmatically. In an October shareholder letter outlining results for Q3, the company wrote, “We also continue to deepen our relationships with third-party platforms to better serve advertisers’ programmatic needs.”
The strategy aims to streamline access to Roku’s inventory and audience, democratizing it for advertisers of all sizes. This move benefits Roku, considering that three-quarters of CTV inventory is now bought programmatically. By opening up access, Roku taps into more of that revenue stream.
Notably, this three-quarters of inventory bought programmatically spans all adtech platforms, including SSPs and DSPs. So, Roku is actively partnering with multiple platforms and not putting all of its eggs in one basket. Teaming up with an SSP like FreeWheel immediately scales access to many leading DSPs, including Nexxen, Beeswax (FreeWheel’s own DSP), Adform, and others.
Experts React:
Eyal Ebel, SVP of Platform Partnerships at PMX, emphasized how the partnership enhances buyer “activation optionality” in the announcement’s press release:
“Marketers today are looking for increased scale and better performance and this integration helps brands holistically reach audiences across the viewing experience – something that has always been important to us as we work to unify the programmatic and digital video landscape. Providing clients with activation optionality, be it DSP, SSP, or Publisher Direct is the best way to deliver outcomes, and we support any partnership that provides our clients with greater transparency and efficiency.”
Our Take:
In the shareholder letter I mentioned, The Trade Desk was used as the key programmatic partner example. However, it will be interesting to see how the relationship may change with the launch of Ventura. (Or, if not change, perhaps be less of a PR play.) It wouldn’t be surprising to see Roku continue to highlight growth and diversification with its programmatic partners throughout 2025.
