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Roku Taps Kroger Solution for Shopper Data, Streaming Ads

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Roku (ROKU - Free Report) recently announced the launch of a shopper data program that is designed to improve targeting and measurement of TV advertising for CPG marketers.

Notably, grocery giant Kroger (KR - Free Report) plans to join the program as the launch partner to build first-to-market targeting and attribution tools for streaming TV.

Cincinnati-based Kroger serves over 9 million customers daily through a seamless digital shopping experience and 2,757 retail food stores under a variety of banner names.

Kroger Precision Marketing (KPM), the large grocery store chain's media advertising business arm, will bring such consumer data to Roku's shopper data program that will help CPG marketers better target ads that run on Roku's platform and tie ad exposure to online and in-store sales.

Roku is teaming up with Kroger to help the TV streaming company use shopper data so its customers can advertise more effectively.

We believe that Roku’s growing efforts to attract advertisers to its platform will drive top-line growth in the near term. Notably, Roku’s shares have returned 12.6% in the past year outperforming the industry’s rally of 8.9%.

One Year Performance

Partnership With Kroger: A Game Changer

As more consumers cut the cord in favor of OTT TV streaming services, marketers are taking a closer look at the potential of video ads to drive a customer purchase. However, attribution has long been an issue in the digital marketing industry, as marketers have difficulty knowing which ad, email or mobile notification generated a sale.

Kroger's partnership with Roku extends the retailer's attribution offering to OTT ad streaming to improve sales for CPG brands placing ads on Roku's network.

CPG marketers will be able to use data to track the effectiveness of TV advertising on sales and use these insights for future marketing. Using Roku's platform integrated with KPM data, for example, marketers can segment messages based on how often a customer purchases from a particular category.

In February, Kroger extended its self-service advertising platform with a new attribution tool to give brands better transparency into their ad spending across the retailer's properties. The Roku integration will perform the same feature for streaming ads.

Roku’s Efforts to Attract Ad Revenues

Even amid the pandemic, Roku generated $232.6 million in first-quarter platform revenues, which includes ads and licensing fees, against only $88.2 million from device sales.

Roku kicked off its new OneView ad platform last month with launch partners, Drizly, Experian, Intuit TurboTax and Lexus. The ad platform is designed to help advertisers use TV identity data to create ads across OTT, desktop and mobile from a single hub.

The live content on Roku Channel is free to view in exchange for eight minutes of advertising time per hour. Roku sells the ad spots on an ad-spot bidding platform built around assets from ad specialist Dataxu, which Roku acquired for $150 million last fall.

As of the end of first-quarter 2020, Roku had 39.8 million active streaming TV accounts, and the company streamed 13.2 billion hours. Roku described itself as the #1 U.S. streaming TV platform, by hours streamed according to Kantar, and the largest licensed TV operating system in North America.

Zacks Rank & Stocks to Consider

Roku currently has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

Some better-ranked stocks in the broader consumer-discretionary sector include Gray Television (GTN - Free Report) and Netflix (NFLX - Free Report) , all carrying a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Long-term earnings growth rate for Gray Television and Netflix is projected to be 10% and 30%, respectively.

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