In 2025, streamers are focused on playing well with others.
As they seek to attract advertisers amid a fragmented streaming landscape, companies with streaming services and platforms, including Roku and Disney, are partnering up with ad-tech companies like The Trade Desk with the goal of improving their ability to leverage data from different companies to make it easier for advertisers to work with them. In other words, interoperability is increasingly the name of the game.
“We work with a number of different programmatic platforms, and part of our strategy is really around interoperability and making our inventory available where brands and agencies want to buy,” Miles Fisher, Roku’s senior director of strategic advertising partnerships, told Marketing Brew.
Cover your bases: In the last year, Disney and Roku have both struck up partnerships with The Trade Desk, one of the largest demand-side platforms in the industry. Disney also integrated its ad exchange with Google’s DV360 and The Trade Desk last March to create DRAX Direct, allowing buying on Disney+ and Hulu. Roku has a similar partnership with DV360 and other DSPs so programmatic buyers can access their inventory.
Making platforms compatible with DSPs like The Trade Desk and Google’s DV360 is a way for streamers to potentially increase the advertisers they can work with.
“If you’re the type of advertiser or holding company that buys programmatically, you’re not going to have multiple DSPs,” Peter Hamilton, Roku’s senior director of product management, told Marketing Brew. “You’re probably going to have a main DSP that you use, and you want to be able to buy everywhere through that DSP.”
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Roku is one of several companies aiming to reach advertisers no matter what platform they use. In January, Roku introduced its Data Cloud product, which connects advertisers to information on Roku viewers’ preferences to help inform their inventory purchases via Roku Exchange, a product the company introduced in June that supports a number of DSPs.
For those advertisers who prefer self-service, Roku in September introduced Ads Manager, a product that includes a Shopify integration and allows merchants to place shoppable ads.
Data dance: Disney is also leaning into interoperability with vendors. Ahead of its Global Tech & Data showcase at CES, the media giant introduced Disney Compass, a data platform that lets advertisers access Disney first-party data and data from measurement partners like Affinity Solutions, LiveRamp, VideoAmp, and Snowflake. Disney has already partnered with two agencies, Publicis and OMG, for audience creation and integration into their planning tools, respectively.
“We’ve heard you ask for direct access to our insights…and for the first time the answer is yes,” Dana McGraw, SVP of data and measurement science, said onstage at the showcase.