With shoppers in gift giving mode, the holidays are an important, if not the most important, time for consumer tech brands to promote their latest and greatest gadgets. In Roku’s 2021 Annual Holiday Consumer Shopping study in partnership with The Harris Poll, we discovered that 63% of holiday shoppers planned to purchase a consumer electronic product. 52% of respondents shared they specifically planned to buy a Smart TV or streaming device.
“As America’s #1 TV streaming platform, Roku’s marketing team focuses on developing an extensive holiday strategy to drive incremental sales for our streaming players, Roku TVs, and audio devices. We know Roku products are the perfect holiday gift and want to ensure we’re top of mind in this key season for prospective shoppers as well as our current customers.” – Todd Witkemper, Director, Product Marketing, Consumer Platform at Roku
But where does tech holiday marketing truly begin? We argue that it starts with Roku’s own advertising solutions.
“Roku is in a rare situation. We sell streaming devices, but we’re also a renowned advertising platform. It gives us unique access to our own advertising tools to promote Roku products to a variety of strategic audiences in a very targeted, efficient way.”– Todd Witkemper, Director, Product Marketing, Consumer Platform at Roku
To unpack how Roku’s advertising solutions work to drive sales during the holidays, we decided to share our strategy to help consumer electronics brands inform their own holiday activations.
Here are 4 key success tactics we’ve used to maximize the holidays with Roku Advertising:
1. Reach new customers with first-party data.
It’s important to fuel your holiday campaigns with the right customer data. That’s why we use OneView, Roku’s ad platform built for TV streaming, to reach our existing customers and encourage them to try a new device or find new audiences similar to existing customers.
With OneView, brands can use their own customer data to reach those who currently are not customers with their advertising campaigns. For Roku, we’re able to create targeted segments of consumers who currently don’t own a Roku device, as well as those who are cord cutters. In addition, we’re able to explore the unique behaviors of customers who are new to Roku and build look-a-like segments to narrow our reach. This is a smart way for tech advertisers to find the customers who are most likely to convert. In fact, we recently introduced Roku’s clean room, a privacy-first data collaboration environment, that makes it even easier for advertisers and agencies to use customer data to develop the right audience segments to meet the goals of their campaigns.
“We want to reach the right type of holiday tech shopper in the most efficient way. To drive incremental sales and bring more people onto the Roku platform, customer data, and the ability to develop custom audiences around it with OneView, is key to our prospecting strategy during the holidays to broaden our audience scope, but in the most efficient way possible.” – John Bergman, Director of Performance Marketing at Roku
2. Reengage customers across devices.
While we know that Roku users spent 73.2 billion hours streaming in 2021, we also know that TVs are just one of several tech devices owned by Roku users. So, with OneView, brands can continue to capitalize on the reach they built on the TV screen to other devices. OneView allows us to engage and reengage the same audience not only on TV streaming, but also across mobile, tablet, and desktop.
“With OneView, you can retarget users on web and mobile after they’ve seen your ad or visited your website. We saw that for Roku’s consumer-facing holiday campaign, retargeted audiences converted the highest.” – John Bergman, Director of Performance Marketing at Roku
For advertisers looking to reach consumers on devices where they are most likely to convert, cross-device retargeting is key to driving holiday sales.
3. Explore unique advertising experiences.
During the holidays, it can be challenging to stand out among the clutter. That’s why Roku leans into TV streaming’s bespoke capabilities to provide better shopper experiences. For example, we elevated a holiday video creative on Roku with a QR code that inspires immediate action without disrupting the streamer’s viewing experience.
“The holidays are the perfect time to help our existing customers discover other products in our line-up or upgrade their current devices. We look to Roku’s unique advertising formats and solutions to make it easier for customers to shop directly from the TV screen. With QR codes and Roku’s interactive ad capabilities, our customers can discover the best prices and deals of the season.” – John Bergman, Director of Performance Marketing at Roku
Beyond QR codes, we’ve also seen success in Roku’s interactive ad units which allow users to use their remote to easily send special offers and promotions from brands directly to their mobile device. For advertisers seeking to maximize lower funnel actions for the holidays, this is a great way to drive website visits or online and mobile purchases.
4. Measure based on incrementality.
Do holiday-focused campaigns truly drive incremental actions? For Roku, the answer is yes! We view incrementality as the holy grail for measuring impact.
Incrementality is vital to prove that your consumers are converting as a direct result of your campaign, measuring overall effectiveness of your ads. For Roku’s holiday campaign, the use of OneView for targeted digital campaigns drove a significant lift in incremental device activations for prospects.
“OneView is unlike any other advertising platform I’ve used before in past lives, especially with the ability to measure incrementality. The process works with “ghost ads” aka purposeful holdout groups where a treatment group sees Roku’s advertising and the holdout group does not. We’re able to then decipher the difference in conversion rates between these two groups and measure the casual impact of our advertising.” – John Bergman Director of Performance Marketing at Roku
We’re excited to take what we’ve learned last year and apply these best practices to the holidays in 2022. For consumer electronics and tech advertisers with similar campaign goals, we encourage you to explore the possibilities of OneView and Roku interactive ads.
Curious to learn more about how Roku Advertising can support your holiday marketing goals? Contact us today.
