Roku is swiftly becoming among the most volatile stocks in the Cheddar 50. Shares of the streaming-device maker were down 26 percent last week, shaken by announcements from Facebook and Comcast that they were offering new streaming products as the pace of cord-cutting in the U.S. intensifies. Still, Roku shares remain up more than 250 percent year-to-date.
It is amid that shakeup that Roku on Monday announced a new partnership with the marketing platform Innovid to provide more in-depth measurements of OTT audiences.
Scott Rosenberg, senior vice president of Roku's platform business, made the announcement on Cheddar. He told Cheddar's Michelle Castillo that the "first-to-market" partnership "is designed to help brands plan, and better migrate their spending into streaming."
Despite streaming video taking up more of a share of "TV time" in U.S. households ー 30 percent of time spent watching video content on television is now happening via an OTT service rather than a traditional cable box ー just 3 percent of brands' advertising budgets is being spent on streaming.
That's because the analytics and measurement technology is still in its infancy compared to the Nielsen ratings that measure traditional TV audiences. Roku is hoping, with the Innovid deal, to help bring more data to brands who may want to increase spending on streaming but aren't sure who and how many people they are reaching, Rosenberg said.
Eventually, streaming ads will be able to merge the "sight, sound, and motion" of traditional TV commercials with digital innovations like interactivity, precise measurability, and targeting, he said.
In its most recent annual report on cord-cutting, Roku predicted that streaming TV viewers could surpass traditional pay TV viewers in five years. And given that most OTT households pay for at least one service, like Netflix or Hulu, the ad-supported streaming model is going to become a bigger part of the TV diet of many viewers, Rosenberg said. He noted that 75 percent of Roku customers already watch at least one ad-supported service on the Roku platform.
"This is a pretty clear indicator that the value proposition of watching something for free in exchange for being exposed to ads is a sound proposition," he said. "Even in this new world."
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Fast-food chains like Starbucks and Wendy's added more egg-filled breakfast items. In normal times, egg producers could meet the demand. But a bird flu outbreak that has forced them to slaughter their flocks is making supplies scarcer and pushing up prices. Some restaurants like Waffle House have added a surcharge to offset their costs.
William Falcon, CEO and Founder of Lightning AI, discusses the ongoing feud between Elon Musk and Sam Altman, and how everyday people can use AI in their lives.
U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum “will not go unanswered,” European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen vowed on Tuesday, adding that they will trigger toug
