In this episode, Louqman Parampath, VP of Product Management, Advertisement at Roku, talks about data’s role in a consumer-first company, clean rooms, AI’s impact on advertising, and so much more.
In this episode, Louqman Parampath, VP of Product Management, Advertisement at Roku, talks about data’s role in a consumer-first company, clean rooms, AI’s impact on advertising, and so much more.
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Steve Hamm: [00:00:00] Loman, it's great to have you on the podcast today, and I, I'm really looking forward to this because I am a streaming media maniac, and I really want to know all about how the advertising and personalization and all that kind of stuff works.
So welcome.
Louqman Parampath: Thank you for the invitation, Steve. Um, I'm excited to be here and talk to you more about, about streaming and the streaming media landscape.
Steve Hamm: Okay. Very good. Roku started off as a device. Providing gadgets that attach to TVs and enabling the first generation of streaming services, but it has expanded quite a bit in recent years. So please describe the company's business and strategy today.
Louqman Parampath: Yeah, you're right Steve. So Roku was started by Anthony Wood, our current ceo, founder, and ceo. Yes. Initially it was a player, a streaming player, and for the first five, six years of the company's existence, that was primarily how the market knew Roku. [00:01:00] It wasn't mid to late 2014 that Roku expanded into offering its operating system.
As an OS that can be embedded into TV or into smart TVs that are, that are owned by other OEMs, you know, other, uh, hardware companies. So we started with TCL license and a bunch of other, uh, TV OEMs that started to license our operating system to actually make the TV truly smart. Right. that was the expansion of Roku and that helped us grow our footprint, especially in the US substantially.
And now we are one of the top smart TV uh, players in the country. And Rosa Roku recently even expanded beyond that to have our own first party TVs, which is our own TVs that are. Uh, that have our OS and them, so TV, going into the TV, ls TV landscape and offering our operating system as a custom-built CTV first, CTV only operating system has really, really helped us grow our footprint [00:02:00] and grow our engagement across the smart TV landscape now. So that's the, that's the hardware device side of the business.
Now A bigger part, bigger chunk of a revenue is through the services we offer in our operating system. So anytime a user buys a subscription of a platform or transaction buys a movie, or you know, watches add supported content, we have ways in which we monetize those users, right?
So through advertising and through rev shares on subscriptions and transactions, we do.
Steve Hamm: Yeah,
Louqman Parampath: We, we do monetize our users and the single biggest component of our monetization strategy is the advertising on the platform itself. And so currently, you know, Roku has, and if you look at Roku's current organizational structure and how the.
Uh, executive team is set up. Uh, we have three distinct lines of, uh, businesses. Uh, one focuses mostly on account acquisition, and that is the team that focuses on TVs and players. Then we have a team, [00:03:00] uh, that focuses on the consumer experience, the, the. The engagement, the home screen experience, the apps on the tv, and how we can have better discovery and search on the platform.
And then we have a third, uh, vertical that focuses primarily on the media itself, on the platform, right? Both the content that we offer to our users that Roku uniquely owns or licenses are, and the advertising and the ad tech that we offer to our advertisers and publishers. So that's, those are the three big verticals of the company right now, and much of the strategies around those three
Steve Hamm: Yeah. Yeah, that makes total sense. Hey, talk a little bit more about the content. Are you actually creating content or just licensing from others?
Louqman Parampath: Yeah, so we have, when we started, With our own ad supported channel called the Roku Channel. This was in mid to late 2017. You know, prior to that, Roku just had, just was a, you know, agnostic platform that offered large, you know, large and small channels or apps to reach, reach all our users. Right. We were mo mostly a distribution [00:04:00] platform.
We started to have our own. And it was an ad supported app, an AVOT app in 2017, much before, you know, AVOD was commonplace in the streaming ecosystem. Uh, and at that point we licensed content by and large, right, with different business models. But it was late 20 20, 20 21. I believe that we actually expanded into what we call as real originals or content that we have, you know, uh, exclusive or we, we unique, we uniquely actually develop for our own purposes.
And that's, that's, A minority of the content that you see on our platform, uh, inside the Roku channel. Uh, but, but yes, it is, it is a good mix of, you know, it is a good mix of licensing and getting, acquiring content from third party sources. That is still the
Steve Hamm: Okay. Very cool. Very cool. I imagine that'll expand in the future. Actually, this field is, is changing so rapidly. It's amazing. You can't, it's hard for a company to actually define itself because things move so fast, right.
Louqman Parampath: That that is correct. And Roku is at the, uh, is at the center of this in many [00:05:00] ways, right? We are a hardware company. We are a media company, and we are a software company. Right? There are a lot of things that we do at the same time.
Steve Hamm: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, what is your role in the company?
Louqman Parampath: so I am responsible for our, uh, advertising platform, atex. So when we talked about the. Focus areas for the company, right? We talked about TVs and players. We talked about the consumer experience, and we talked about the, the media. So the content and the advertising that we offer on the platform.
So by and large, I am responsible for the advertising tech. The ad platform that drives the monetization through advertising for our platform. So this includes all our capabilities around, uh, showing the right ad with the, to the right user at the right time. So all the ad serving and targeting and machine learning and optimization, and also all.
Measurement capabilities and integration with third party, uh, providers to ensure that Roku advertising is measured appropriately so the advertiser sees the value in their spend on our [00:06:00] platform, and also all the different ways in which advertisers are increasingly by media on connected tv, whether it is through a direct io managed service model, or whether it is through programmatic models or cell service models, right?
So, so I support the, so my, my team is responsible for the overall vision, strategy, and execution of ad tech.
Steve Hamm: Okay. Very good, very good. Now, you've worked for a, a number of companies previously, kind of straddling hardware, software content, just like Roku is now. Have your earlier experiences really helped you deal with today's challenges on your job?
Louqman Parampath: Yeah. That that is, that is true. You know, I've, I've been in the industry for quite some time. I started as an engineer, an audio engineer doing, you know, uh, low level coding and, uh, doing what is, what would be in working in the areas of, you know, Echo cancellation and digital signal processing, and then moved into voiceover IP software before I, before I moved into product management and started, uh, started getting into ad tech.
So I've been in ad tech for 15 plus years right now, advertising [00:07:00] tech. And so have a fair, fairly good sense of what it takes to build large, large ad platforms. Uh, I mean, obviously my experience has helped me get to where I am right now. Uh, you know, the things that I look for is, you know, a lot of it is around.
The technology has evolved so much in the last 10 to 15 years, right? We talk so much about big data and big data capabilities. We, we are increasingly talking about machine learning and, and what that means in the world of artificial intelligence and so on. So, I think one of the things that I keep looking at it at, at a lot of this is, you know, how does all of this help with decision making and building great products and great platforms that can drive meaningful amount of, uh, spent to flow through it, right?
So this is data driven decision making, making sure the, the way you look at. Prioritization and look at all the things that needs to be done. All the opportunities you have in the market are prioritized appropriately using, you know, uh, using cold logic and [00:08:00] data and, and ensuring that the ones that you prioritize, you follow up and execute well against it.
Couple of other things. As you know, what I, I try to do is to always take a step back and think big, right? Oftentimes we, we all work in, uh, jobs. That has tens of things thrown at us, at us at any point in time. So kind of always taking a step back and looking at the bigger picture and what could be, not just incremental changes to how you think about a roadmap or how you think about your business, but what could be step-wise or larger, large scale changes or revolutionary changes that can, that can.
What your customer wants, so what your customer's customer wants. Those are the kind of things that as a, as a product person, I try to focus on so that I feel like meaningful, that could provide meaningful value to my organization.
Steve Hamm: Okay, that makes total sense. Now, we've, we've talked a little bit about how quickly, kind of the media landscape, the, the advertising landscape has changed, you know, the, the first, third, second, third [00:09:00] generations of streaming services. Let's go back in time a little bit, and you talked about you've been in, in.
In the EdTech space for 15 years. So historically, how has Roku interacted with advertising partners and shared data with 'em? So we're, look, we're looking at the past, kind of the, the previous generation of, of, of business models.
Louqman Parampath: Yeah, no, that, that's a good question. Like so when we started our ad business, right, it's been eight plus years now. Uh, Roku actually sold its first ad on, its on its ui, right? And it was an ad to promote content by one of our channel partners. Uh, that's, that's how we started our ad business. And then now we have expanded to not just advertising for our channel partners, but any, any brand advertiser looking to move dollars into connected TV from TV or digital budgets.
We are, we are a platform that they can leverage, uh, Data has been at the core of how we have differentiated ourselves in the market. Right? [00:10:00] So, and when we looked at that historically, the first thing that was top of mind for us was Roku is a consumer company, first and foremost. We are not, we're not an ad tech company by definition.
You know, I mean, advertising is the primary way in which we make money, but we are a consumer company. Our first responsibility and commitment is to our consumers and our users. So we have been careful in how our data is. We do use it for, you know, a better experience completely on our platform, not just for advertising, but also for recommendations, content recommendations, personalization, and ensuring the journey the, the user has on our platform is the one that they would be most comfortable with, the one that would really delight them, that they would really be, really enjoy.
So, but as you know, and as some of the, you may know, The adtech ecosystem is a very complex ecosystem with a lot of players across both the cell and the buy [00:11:00] side, across both the publisher side and the advertiser side with a lot of partners in between and some amount of data sharing or some amount of.
Uh, using your data across the ecosystems required to prove the value of your advertise, to provide a better experience to our consumers and to prove the value of your advertisers to the buyers who are spending money on your platform. Right. So, so we, we were clear that from the very beginning that data is an important differentiator for us.
We. Very careful in how it is used internally and externally, but we were also clear that we did not want to wall ourselves up. We were, we are not a walled garden. You know, we, we believed in, uh, the, the openness of the ecosystem. We, for instance, we wanted to make sure that third party measurement partners could measure media on our platform.
Right? Otherwise, uh, how would the, how would the buyer know that what they're actually spending on our platform is meaningful? So what we've done is we've been very careful in picking partners. We've [00:12:00] had certification principles and certification policies to guide us and help the right partners to pick whether it is on the targeting side, whether it is on the measurement side, whether it is on the optimization side, whether it is as a technology vendor who is working with our data to ensure that uh, the right trusted partners are picked, who are in the ecosystem, who are scale.
Whose data strategies align with how we look at data and data sharing, and that anything we do keeps consumer opt-in and consumer consent in mind, and also keeps the overall user experience in mind. We were very, very clear that nothing we do can impair the user experience in any way whatsoever.
Steve Hamm: Yeah. Yeah, that makes total sense. So kind of if you can get a little more gritty about that, kind of what were the sharing mechanisms back five, six years ago, that
Louqman Parampath: Yeah, I mean the sharing mechanisms where, you know, there were scenarios where we would send, [00:13:00] we would ingest data and we would match IDs, you know, identities, whether it is a hash gmail or whether some kind of an encrypted token or a hash. Uh, hashtag ID that, that the data provider, and we would, we would uniquely have, and in many cases we would try to do that on our site, right?
We would have, we would ingest the data as long as it is, as long as we believe in the quality and the rights of the data. On the price of the data. And then we would use some kind of a mechanism to match those datasets and enable it for targeting. And similarly, for, you know, measurement is under the common use case where we would offer exposure data, but.
we would hash the ID that would be used and, and what goes out and what is matched to any other dataset owned by a measurement partner, so to speak, would also be hashed. So there are, there, there would be ways in which we would ensure that the, uh, the PI aspects of the data was anonymized as much as possible, but still the data is useful for the use cases that we were actually trying to enable.
Steve Hamm: so in the, in the [00:14:00] past few years and, and looking forward, There are a lot of changes in privacy laws and practices worldwide and the United States, so these are affecting the way personalization is done in the streaming media data space. So how has that made you kind of rethink and readjust the way you think about data and, and the way you share data?
Louqman Parampath: Yeah, no, that's, that's a great question. I mean, like I said, because we were always a consumer first company. We had a lot of these things well in place even prior to some of these changes. Obviously we had to do things too. We a hundred percent compliant with, you know, when GDPR came into effect in 2018 or when CPA came into effect two years later, there were, there were a bunch of things we needed to do, but a lot of our data share, data sharing policies and principles were generally very cons, consumer forward and privacy forward from the time we started the, from the time we started the ad. some of the key things we had to do was obviously be very clear in our, [00:15:00] uh, TNCs and our privacy policies on exactly what are the data sets we collect, how those data is used. You know, some data is not used for all use cases, right? Some data used, used for a subset of use cases, so there were a lot more clarity that we added and transparency that we provided to our consumers on.
How the data is used. Our constant mechanisms did change quite a bit, especially outside of the us right? With gdpr, we had opt-in that we launched, uh, even in the US you know, the, the kind of opt-outs we offered did evolve over time. Uh, we, we also pushed out more granular settings, so granular capabilities, uh, for.
Consumers to actually opt out of certain kinds of, you know, uh, targeting, so to speak, without still in the process of doing some of this without overly complic complicating the options that they have. Right? So more personalized settings around, uh, advertising, uh, is, is another thing that we, uh, we focused on with the, with the changes in the privacy [00:16:00] landscape and obviously things we had to do for compliance.
Like data access rights and data deletion and, data requests and so on and so forth. There were a bunch of, needs that did come up as part of these regulatory changes. And we, we made, we made sure those were all, uh, Those were all actually integrated into, you know, how we, how we collect data from our users, how the data is managed and stored in, into our data pipelines, into our data management capabilities.
So those, there's a fair amount of work to be done there to manage that. And that's the other aspect of how we looked at, you know, uh, how we looked at managing to the evolving privacy landscape
Steve Hamm: Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that's, it's, that's really good to hear because, um, you know, in my personal experience on the web, You know, sometimes I'm confronted with like, oh, here, here, sign this document. Uh, certify this. And it's, and it, and it's, it's like you're signing a legal document. You can't even understand what you're signing.
So this idea of really making it digestible and understandable and accessible to, uh, to the consumer, I think is a real [00:17:00] service to the consumer. So
Louqman Parampath: Yeah. And that's something we've tried to do quite a bit at Roku, which is when we show an opt-in for some kind. Some kind of a mechanism that collects incremental data. We try to, we try to take out the jargon out of it. We try to take out the legalese, uh, out of it and try to make it, uh, like any, any user facing capability.
Right? It's less about the, less about the. Uh, there is the legal aspect of it, there is a privacy and compliance aspect of it, but that, that you can click on another button and go see it. But the primary interface that you see is something that is very easy for the user to understand. And we also tried to offer that with some kind of a value exchange.
So one of the things, one of the, uh, examples I have here is we were. As a smart TV platform, we did launch the capability to enable a technology called automated content recognition, which lets us collect, uh, viewership data on linear viewing behavior on our, on our TVs, and
Steve Hamm: Wait, wait, wait. What is linear? [00:18:00] What's
Louqman Parampath: Yeah, linear tv, linear viewing is basically on Roku tv.
Is it a non streaming viewing? Right. So when you actually watching tv, uh, on a Roku tv, but not on the streaming side. So you're watching it over your H D
Steve Hamm: regular programming.
Louqman Parampath: your, uh, antenna and regular programming, right? Not streaming, not IP based. Uh, and. We enabled automated content recognition.
Uh, this was five, six years. Again, we were very clear about the op. We made it opt-in. We wanted to make sure that the user has the option, uh, to consent. Uh, the user has the option to opt out of it. Uh, and, and we were very clear about what is being done, uh, and secondly, What is the value exchange of the user, right?
We use that data to provide incremental recommendations or data that offered them multiple ways to watch the same piece of content. Or if you're watching one show, what is the best way to get to the, the, the remaining shows, uh, the remaining episodes in that series, for instance. So those were the kind of things that we did, and we tried to make it more consumer friendly or as consumer friendly as [00:19:00] possible within the context of what we were trying.
Steve Hamm: Yeah, yeah. No, I think that's all good. And I, I just, I just wanna applaud you guys for the kind of this gooey work you're doing, this interface work, because, you know, I look at a lot of streaming media, you know, Platforms, they, the navigation, the search, there's, there's still a lot of issues. It's not that easy to use.
And I think, you know, all these, you know, the winners in, in this competition are, are, one of the factors is gonna be how easy is it for people to navigate, find what they want, all that kind of stuff.
Louqman Parampath: And that's one area of Heroku as a consumer device still. Does better than pretty much every other device in the market is around its simplicity and ease of use, right? I mean, a lot of other streaming has gotten complicated. Uh, there are a lot of options to, uh, end consumers today. Uh, there are so many ways in which you could watch the same piece of content.
Uh, sports. Sports is coming, is being made increasingly available on, on, on streaming. But one [00:20:00] thing we have focused, you know, maniacally, uh, for many, many, uh, years is just the simplicity and ease of use of the
Steve Hamm: No, no. That's great to hear. That's great. Now, about a year ago, Roku teamed with Snowflake to build an advertising personalization clean room on top of Snowflake's Media Data Cloud. Now, how does this work and why did you choose the Snowflake platform?
Louqman Parampath: Yeah. So this, this goes back to what I was saying at the beginning, right? Like, we are a consumer first company. Uh, that's the, that's our core dna. We are focused on how we use data, uh, and how we share data, uh, in a very methodical, careful, and, uh, and thoughtful. So we've always had some partners where we have shared data certified partners, where we're very comfortable with working with them to, to the betterment of the overall ecosystem and ultimately for the betterment of the consumer experience.
You know, you show the right hat to the right user at the right time so that it is least disruptive for the end consumer. Uh, so.[00:21:00] as the landscape evolved, you know, uh, and as we looked at some of our partners, one of the things we did want to do was to actually get to a state, and this is, this is still work in progress.
This is, we are moving at an accelerated pace here is how do we get to a point where we can connect data sets? And I talked to you about the different ways in which we connect data sets to different set of partners and for different use cases, how we connect data sets without actually sharing. Right, without actually having the data lever for walls.
And with that goal in mind, you know, because that is, that is more privacy compliant. There is more control to our data. There is little to no risk of leakage. And we know exactly how the data is used, for instance, right? So all of these were advantages. So with that in mind, we have been looking at. Kind of advanced tech, clean room kind of tech for quite some time.
And we've looked at a few partners and we, we ended up using Snowflake for a few things, right? One is, one is the overall goal on, on connecting data without sharing, we were interested in snowflake's, fundamental [00:22:00] multi-party compute capability. Uh, we also saw that some of. Partners had started to use Snowflake, which was helpful to us because ultimately we wanted a setup where, you know, uh, where if both sides are using, uh, snowflake, it makes it easier to actually actually connect our different data sets.
And then the key things we were looking. Was an infrastructure capability with, with multi-party compute, uh, uh, avail availability on top, but also some amount of access controls, permissioning, uh, data rights, uh, and so on. We were at least initially less focused on. Privacy enhancing tech. That is, that is changing.
We were more focused on, uh, the, the permissioning and access rights around the data and keeping the data on our side of the house. Right. And with that in mind, and, and one other thing is we also had unique. Needs where we wanted to build our own BI or our own API layer on top that would let that data be used in the ways, uh, we wanted to be used.
So looking [00:23:00] at these distinct set of needs, snowflake fil fitted, the bill, uh, you know, adequately and properly. And so we have moved ahead in using Snowflake as the infrastructure, as the foundation for a lot of the clean room capabilities we are building inside Roku.
Steve Hamm: Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting to think about because you have different kinds of partners that use data in different ways, and then within those organizations you have different people in different roles. So you have to slice and dice this data in, in, in incredibly, uh, fine ways. And you can only do that on a platform that really enables it as kind of built in rather than something that's on top.
Okay. So I get all of that. Yeah. So what, when you look at this, you've been doing this for, for a year with Snowflake, what's, can you point to like something that's, you know, one or two benefits that have really been the most important to you, or even surprises for you?
Louqman Parampath: I mean, not really a surprise. We've been [00:24:00] generally happy with the progress in which the ecosystem has evolved to use. Use the clean room like in the last. 12 months, we have seen more progress across the ecosystem, around clean rooms than we saw in three years prior. Right? So there is an acceleration that we are seeing in the market that helps us because ultimately, uh, the thing that will drive more usage of clean room like Techers is.
Obviously the capabilities and the feature sets, but also the interoperability, right? There are different players out there, and so something that is common and, uh, foundational, you know, similar infrastructure and similar, the basic capabilities on the sitting on top allows different kinds of clean rooms to talk to each other, right?
So that's, that's one thing that has. Evolved and moved fast. But also is one of the challenges still, right? Because there are different vendors and there are different places and there are different cloud providers. You know, you have AWS and GCP and, and Azure and you have uh, you have different data warehouses on top, you know, snowflake and Databricks and so [00:25:00] on.
And then, then on top of it, uh, you know, you have different apps. That's it too, right? So, and some of them are, you know, custom like ours. So the interoperability question does get complicated. Uh, but also we are seeing a lot more focus from. Publishers and advertisers with respect to using this tech to enable data to be used properly in the ecosystem.
And then we also seen a fair amount of innovation from technology partners like yourself and uh, other players in the ecosystem that I believe, you know, there is, there is a fair amount of momentum building behind us.
Steve Hamm: Yeah, that's good to hear. You know, when I started covering technology back in the 1980s, you know, people talked about interoperability within like the PCs and there were certain aspects of it, but really what companies wanted to do was wall off and con and have everybody on that platform. And, you know, nobody else can, can touch it.
But I'm I, it seems that in our era right now, You really have to be, you have to play [00:26:00] interoperability very seriously. Any kind of walling off is almost like gonna be a detriment to the company that does it. Right. I mean, and that's, we've really turned the corner on that, I think, right?
Louqman Parampath: I, I, I, I agree with that. And, and that is, in some ways that is good for the ecosystem too, right? I mean, that is, that is where we feel like, you know, there are opportunities for innovation to, uh, to actually help us move faster with, yeah.
Steve Hamm: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because, because barriers are friction to everybody, technical barriers, so, yeah.
Louqman Parampath: Yes, absolutely.
Steve Hamm: that's slows innovation. Very good. Very good. Hey, uh, um, looking forward, do you have any other strategic data initiatives that are in the work? Is some kind of something on the level of, of the clean room type technology?
Louqman Parampath: I mean, like, I, like I said in the very beginning, right? Data is an important differentiator for us. Like we, we differentiate our ad platform and our media capabilities on our, on our data, on our, when I say data, it is both our identity. You know [00:27:00] who, who. Who we know, who the user is, and also the attributes we have on the user.
You know, what we know about the user, and then all the tech we have built around it, right? All the real time decisioning capabilities on the machine learning and optimization capabilities. All the performance and measurement capabilities. So that's broadly, uh, how we talk about our platform, how we talk about how differentiated we are.
Uh, And so there is always something around, around data related initiatives that is brewing and new things we could do, right? We are focused on things like improving the planning and forecasting capabilities for advertisers on a platform, right? And that is again, involves some amount of data sharing through a clean room and enabling them to understand our user base with, with the kind of user bases that advertisers have, for instance, right?
And so what are the best ways to, best ways to do that? We are also increasingly focused on. Not going beyond Roku and helping the industry solve for CLO cross platform attribution and, uh, and how, how we can help them [00:28:00] figure out, you know, when you buy across the connected TV ecosystem, including Roku, but not just on Roku, uh, what is the incremental value of.
The Roku, uh, media that you spent, uh, and how do we, how do we make sure that, you know, they see the value in moving more and more of their budgets to connected tv? We are, we are convinced that, uh, the linear dollars, traditional linear TV dollars have not moved to connected TV as much as the consumption of viewership has.
And we are looking at ways in which we can use data across the campaign buying life cycle to enable that acceleration or further, further, you know, get that dollars to ac to move into connect.
Steve Hamm: Oh, that's really interesting to think about. The viewers have moved, but the ad budgets haven't moved. Commensurately. Yeah. So you've gotta, I can see why you would need to do that. Um, Interesting. Hey, so is a lot of ad buying, I know on like internet platforms so much ad buying is done in, in a very [00:29:00] automated platforms.
Is that the same thing with with streaming TV and, and, and TV platforms or is that, or is it more mechanical?
Louqman Parampath: Yeah, I mean, it's still little behind. So if you look at traditional digital advertising, right, it was less automated to begin with 15 years ago. And over time, all of digital is automated or programmatic right now, right? I mean, there are pockets where it is not, but by and large it is. So connected TV budgets are mostly brand budgets, you know, upper funnel budgets.
And so they tend to be, they tend to be a little bit. Manual then programmatic are automated and there are a bunch of reasons for that. But again, programmatic in CTV is one of the faster growing parts of the ecosystem. And that is, that is where CTV is just following the lead in digital.
And you would expect that to, you know, uh, to move, to move at a faster pace over the next few years.
Steve Hamm: Yeah. Gotcha, gotcha. So looking out over the next year or so, what are the kind of the, the major technology trends [00:30:00] in, in data analytics, data management that you see coming, that you think will have a big impact on stream media, on streaming media, the advertising space in
Louqman Parampath: Yeah, I mean, one is, one is very clearly the growth of avod. When I, I mentioned this earlier with our launch of the Roku channel. This was 2017 when we launched the Roku channel. At that point in time, AVOD was still fairly small. Ad supported viewing was a minority of all viewing on, uh, on connected tv.
And it was, it was mostly Netflix and a few others.
Steve Hamm: Can you define Ava avod?
Louqman Parampath: Ava is ad uh, you know, video advertising supported video on demand. So in the, in the connected TV ecosystem, you typically have the sva, which is subscription based or ad supported, or AVA is ad supported viewing, right? So, uh, what's changed with AVA has become very much mainstream.
Uh, that's, and a large number of users do prefer, prefer, do, have a preference to, you know, uh, or, or, or, okay. Trading of, [00:31:00] uh, subscription cost for some amount of advertising. And that's why you have even very large players like Netflix and Disney Plus now having a, or tiers in their, in their offerings, right?
So, so the growth of AVA and that growth of ad. Viewing is one of the larger trends, and that will be, that will, that is how streaming is evolving. And, uh, and, and so ad advertising as a way in which streaming platforms will continue to, uh, drive a meaningful amount of revenue will, will grow. Uh, that's, that's definitely one.
Now within the, within the context of streaming, advertis. Which was, I guess your question and uh, one of the larger trends I think that will play out as streaming today is still seen as a very. Tv like Medium, which means it is very brand, brand focused. So the most of, most of advertising that happens on streaming, uh, is, is brand buyers, you know, moving, moving some of their [00:32:00] TV dollars over and looking for.
Incremental reach of users that they do not get on linear anymore, right? They are trying to find the same users that they actually send their, send their brand campaigns to now, not available on on traditional tv. On linear tv, and trying to find them on streaming.
Steve Hamm: Yeah.
Louqman Parampath: I, what we believe, and what I think will happen is streaming is actually a full funnel medium, which what that means is it is, it is good, not just so brand advertising.
It is also good. Performance advertising. You know, advertisers who typically spend a lot of their dollars on search and social and other digital channels where you are trying to drive a response, you're trying to drive a conversion directly from the ad itself. And because streaming has the best of TV where you have the.
You have the big screen experience and the 15 and 32nd video where you can tell a story, but also it's all IP based, right? So you know which user watched what show and what piece of, what piece of content, and then what ad you can actually match that [00:33:00] back to conversions and effectively see how effective your streaming advertising is.
So it is a very strong source for lower funnel advertising and driving performance and seeing the. Uh, value of advertising very, very quickly, uh, for which is what performance and direct response advertisers typically want.
Steve Hamm: Yeah. Yeah. Hey, is the, let me ask you, I mean, my, my sense was that a lot of young people are just, you know, they're going with streaming and with apps and things like that rather than these, these subscriptions or more traditional TV based stuff. Is, is, has that trend continued? And, and, and if so, what kind of technologies are kind of being evolved to deal.
Louqman Parampath: I mean, if your question is around the kind of the, the audience profile of the demographic profile of folks was streaming predominantly, I think streaming is mainstream right now, you know, so it is like, if you look at our user base, right? The latest numbers is 70 million. We have 70 million plus active accounts, [00:34:00] you know, uh, and which that, that's a very large number.
Uh, and it's a global number, but the majority of them are in the US And so the, the profile, the demographic profile of our consumers pretty much mirror. Demographic profile of the US population. You know, obviously there are pockets where, uh, we see, uh, you know, younger and uh, you know, higher income folks, uh, spending more time on streaming.
But generally it is very mainstream. You see that across the board. You know, we sell our devices and TVs across all the major retailers, including Walmart and Coast Costco and so on. So what we generally see is a fairly, fairly strong, uh, correlation between the. Population profile and what, what people, uh, you know, the, the kind of people who actually stream predominantly and, and that, that's, that's where the ultimate value, the ultimate opportunity is.
In the, is is in the streaming ecosystem. Is in the, is in the, is in the growth here. Right. This is, this is truly, truly something that [00:35:00] everybody will be using across, across the entire breadth of the population.
Steve Hamm: no, that's, that's You crossed the chasm, right?
Louqman Parampath: Well, across the chest,
Steve Hamm: Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, so I'm gonna ask you to put on your visionary cap for a minute. So looking out five years or more, what are the major data technology shifts that you see coming that could transform business, the economy, or even.
Louqman Parampath: the first one that comes to mind as, as the rage. Right now, it is all about generative AI and how that actually touches everything that we do. It is one of those, uh, one of those trends that.
Almost everybody seems to agree and I'm, I'm in that, I'm in that bandwagon that it will transform the way we do. We do business, transform the way we, we spend our daily lives. You know, our, our our, uh, basic habits will, will change over time with its impact. Uh, it's. It's like chat g PT just launched four months ago and you already seen its adoption.
You see AI everywhere today. I was reading an [00:36:00] article on LinkedIn about how LinkedIn is using it for, you know, helping people create resumes and referrals and so on. So it is like, it is, it is there in the emails that you send, it, is there in the, the documents that you create? There are, there are, uh, there is AI everywhere.
You know, I don't think. Truly ever become sentient, but it will be a part and parcel of how we, how we actually go about doing our daily shows increasingly, and, and that's, that will become much more commonplace in, in, in five years. That's, that's one.
Steve Hamm: Well, how do you, how do you, how do you see generative AI or AI in general affecting the ad space?
Louqman Parampath: there's a lot of ways in which it could play out in the ad space. Right. A lot of, like, we do use a fair amount of. ML AI in, in targeting and optimization and effectively showing the right user to the right, uh, the right app to the right user. An area where generated where could be very helpful, as in some of the creative capabilities, right?
Uh, and kind of truly, truly personalizing, personalizing the, the experience for the user from a creative perspective. There [00:37:00] are multiple other areas where, you know, uh, I could see AI play out. I mean, it's one of those areas where big data and large amounts of data and, and. Kind of machine learning and machine learning based training models have already been a big part of, a big part of how we actually improve or augment the experience for the user because this is an industry with a large amount of dollars flowing through, right?
So when you have a lot of dollars flowing through it, you do take the latest, latest technology and the trends in technology and try to make the best use of it. So yes, you would, you would expect some of that to play out in advertising very quickly
Steve Hamm: Well, it's, it, it really is interesting to see how quickly this is happening. we're coming to the end of the podcast. You know, we, we typically end on a lighter note, kind of more tur, more personal, and, uh, you're in the streaming business and I understand that you, like, you, like to consume your, your content via streaming as well.
What are you streaming? Right?
Louqman Parampath: Yeah, I mean, one of the things that I've been excited about streaming is just that fact that more and most [00:38:00] sports is available in streaming. It was, was in many ways the, uh, the last frontier for streaming. You know, I mean, I'm a big soccer fan. I watch a lot of epl, English Premier League, so happy to see that.
I watch that in, uh, it's a little fragmented still. You go to multiple channels, multiple apps to actually see it. But I spend quite a bit of time catching up on my soccer every weekend. The shows that I watch right now are, you know, I. Still watching Lincoln Lawyer from Netflix, you know, last of us on HBO Max.
These are some of the shows that I stream currently at my, in my home. Uh, but yeah, uh, you know, there's always a ton of shows that are available in, in many ways, and e an evidence of stuff to watch on TV right now.
Steve Hamm: Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. You know, we've had the Oscars just earlier this week. I, I would imagine that immediately in the aftermath of the Oscars, there must have been a streaming bonanza.
Louqman Parampath: Mm-hmm.
Steve Hamm: know, just people, wait, I missed that. Let's, let me go, go take a look and, and stuff like that. You know, I, I saw you, you're familiar with r r r, the India because they did [00:39:00] the, the big dance number on, on the Oscars, and I thought, oh, here's some big, you know, Bollywood fun show.
I went and watched R Rrr. It is a very serious story about an uprising against the British Raj. And I, I was stunned, and I said, but it has two big DA dance numbers in the middle of it, so it's really kind of amazing to see how entertainment and very, and some very serious themes can be packaged in the same, in the same video.
So
Louqman Parampath: Yeah, that's what in the Indian film industry is known for, right? It's always, uh, they're always a lot of, uh, they're always, they're all musicals and whatever, how serious the, the team is, the topic has, you know, they, uh, there's always a spot to show a song.
Steve Hamm: Yeah. Yeah, that's, I think that's nice. It's good to have variety. Yeah. Hey, so this has been a wonderful conversation.And I gotta tell you, the thing that I really, that really struck me the most about what you said is how Roku is a customer first, or consumer [00:40:00] first, uh, organization and how, if you think about your business through that lens, You are going to have transparency.
You're gonna, you're gonna, you're gonna take care of transparency and privacy because you really care about the consumer experience. And, and I, I wish that every digital company in the world had the same attitude. And, and, you know, as we look to the future with AI coming, this is gonna be even more important.
Louqman Parampath: That's absolutely correct.
Steve Hamm: So, uh, more power to you and to, to Roku for that, for that basic pH.
Louqman Parampath: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Steve. This was a great conversation and thank you again for the invitation