The TV industry wants you to see more AI-generated ads

TV commercials could soon look a lot like ads in your Instagram and TikTok feeds: weirder, cheaper, and a lot more personal.

Roku, one of the leading streaming gateways for millions of US viewers, is experimenting with ways to open your TV screen to more advertisers with the help of AI-generated ads.

The plan: The company this month announced plans to expand access to AI-generated commercials to small and midsize businesses, instead of just the company’s top ~200 advertisers. Roku is aiming for ~100,000 advertisers to make AI video ads for its streaming service, the Roku Channel, according to CFO and COO Dan Jedda.

• By providing access to thousands of smaller advertisers, Roku hopes to make streaming ads more personalized and competitive.
• The company also aims to cash-in on small- to- medium-sized businesses, who typically spend their marketing dollars on web search and/or social media ads.

Where Roku goes, others will likely follow

Other major streamers (as well as Shrimp Jesus and Bigfoot’s agent) are watching with bated breath, since the performance of Roku’s new advertising push will likely serve as a bellwether for the industry.

• As The Verge notes: “If you want to know where TV is going, it’s a good idea to closely watch Roku. It’s a public company with a singular focus on smart TVs and streaming, which forces it to be a lot more transparent about its numbers than, say, Amazon or Google.”
• Roku is also a market leader in the US. Its OS devices currently account for ~21.4% of all Americans’ TV viewing time, while Roku TVs and streaming devices are now in 50+% of all US broadband households.

Big picture: A handful of media conglomerates—including Comcast, Universal Ads, and Britain’s Channel 4—are also developing AI tools and self-service platforms to make streaming-TV ads affordable for small and midsize businesses.