I mean, we — our approach outside the US has been to focus on a small number of specific countries, just called focused countries, establish scale in those countries and then add more countries. So the countries we’ve been focused on historically are primarily countries in the Americas, like US, Mexico, Canada, Brazil, and then outside the Americas, primarily the UK. And we’re seeing great progress in all those countries. And then at some point we’ll add other countries as well. So I don’t know, Mustafa, if you want to — I don’t know if you have anything to add on international or if you just want…
Mustafa Ozgen: No, I think [indiscernible].
Anthony Wood: Walmart-VIZIO.
Mustafa Ozgen: Walmart-VIZIO. Sure. Hi, Ruplu. Look, we’ve spent the last 15 years building America’s number one TV streaming platform and the brand. And our users love Roku and ask for Roku, and many have multiple devices in their homes. So we are becoming the platform where they consume their content. So we know what our customers want and we are always innovating. Our innovation is not just about launching new features, but also bringing down the cost of the existing features for customers. So we have a very strong setup here. We are confident in our ability to continue to grow our streaming households. Obviously, we have a great relationship with all of our retail partners, including Walmart, where we are an important part of their shelf space in streaming players, TVs and smart home categories.
Additionally, we have a wide retail distribution in and outside of the US, and we continue to expand it and also deepen it with select retail partners. So overall, we have a robust strategy to continue to grow our streaming household with our devices. That includes streaming players, our licensed Roku TV program, and our Roku branded TVs that we launched last year. Over down to Roku branded TVs, we are expanding the product lineup with recent introduction of higher performance TVs with the Roku Pro series, which complement the existing Select and Plus series, and we’re also expanding its distribution. They are now available at Best Buy, Costco, amazon.com and walmart.com. So these factors and our strong track record and capacity to innovate, such as recently announced AI-based picture quality settings, along with our singular focus on streaming and low cost hardware that’s enabled by our purpose-built TV operating system, gives us confidence that we will keep growing our distribution and streaming households.
Anthony Wood: And this is Anthony, again. So just back, third part of your question was on DSPs. I’ll turn it over to Charlie, but just — I’ll just say that like I said before, I highlighted three areas where I think there’s a lot of potential for us to increase our focus, drive more growth, accelerate growth in 2025 in terms of platform revenue growth. And DSPs are one of the pillars and we’ve changed our strategy a bit there to be much more focused on working with third-party partners. And I would say it’s pretty early in that trans — in that sort of adoption of that new strategy, and there’s a lot of room to grow. But we’ve had some early successes and we’re making good progress. That’s the high level view. I don’t know, Charlie, if you want to expand on that.
Charlie Collier: I agree. Thanks, Ruplu, for the question. It’s early innings for sure. I think we’re getting to the heart of our lineup. There continues to be a ton of opportunity for us with third-party DSPs, and it’s an important priority for all of us. As you know, over the last year or so, we made the strategic changes Anthony talked about, and we’ve been really focusing on incorporating more third-party DSPs now. It is going well, but the expanded access to our platform that I talked about on the last call, we now have over 30 partners, not just all the names you think of, by the way, our list includes all the notable partners, but also Instacart and Cox Auto and others you might not immediately have come to mind. So this expansion is part of our commitment to an open ecosystem, which is central to our growth strategy.
And I think this will be a key differentiator for us versus large closed ecosystems. As I’ve shared before, we’re committed to flexibility and meeting advertisers where they prefer to transact. And this strategic pivot has been paying real dividends. In the first quarter, we continued to see increase in programmatic ad spend as a percentage of total video investment on our platform, and that underscores for me the strength and appeal of our offering. Our strategy isn’t just about expanding the platforms we operate on, it’s also about deepening these relationships. So we’re making it easier for advertisers to execute campaigns programmatically with us and easier for them to use Roku inventory. So as we continue to deploy our programmatic strategies, Ruplu, I really expect us to continue the early traction we’re seeing and prove that this is really just, as you said, early innings.
Ruplu Bhattacharya: Thank you so much for all the details and congrats on the quarter.
Charlie Collier: Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. One moment for our next question. And it comes from the line of Jason Bazinet with Citi. Please proceed.
Jason Bazinet: I just had a quick question on the Home Screen. I’m always surprised when I turn on my Roku, how much sort of white space there is there. My question is, is your sense that this sort of move from static to more video-centric is sort of the key unlock to monetize it? Or do you think there’s just something about marketers that don’t quite understand since it’s a pretty unique sort of piece of inventory to buy? In other words, do you think that this shift to video is sort of a key enabler or could it take more time? Thanks.
Anthony Wood: This is Anthony. I think that, just to be frank, like, there’s lots of areas we spend our time and our resources on, and our Home Screen has served us well. There is a lot of white space as part of what makes it iconic, different, recognizable as part of our brand. But I would say the big change is that we just identified it like, okay, we’re going to prioritize resources to work on the Home Screen. There’s just a lot of untapped opportunity there. video ad is just one of the areas of opportunity. I mean, integrating some content, like the recommendation row that we’re adding. But there’s just lots of — there’s just lots of areas on the Home Screen in terms of the potential to both increase engaging UI experiences with our viewers and more deeply integrating promotion and advertising in ways that work for marketers as well as our viewers.
And so, no, I think the video — adding a video ad to the Home Screen is going to be very popular as well, my prediction, it’ll be very popular with advertisers. It’s — like I said, it’s households with 140 million people in them, daily reach before they enter an app. Many of those apps don’t have video advertising. So it’ll –I think it’ll be popular. And like I said, we’re also looking at other ways to integrate video into our Home Screen. But the video is not the only thing we’re looking at.
Jason Bazinet: That’s great.
Jason Bazinet: And then, Charlie, do you think marketers understand the value of your advertising on the Home Screen?
Charlie Collier: I do. Thanks for the question, Jason. Look, it’s really about distinction. We do so much well, but as Anthony said, when you got nearly 120 million people, that’s huge distinction in of itself. And there’s a whole class of viewers today who purchase ad-free streaming subscriptions, for example. And they do so they see fewer ads. And so it’s worth noting, and you should remember that the one thing all viewers see when they turn on their TV is our Home Screen. And Roku’s ads, as you know, are [clearly] (ph) placed in an uncluttered ad environment. So we literally have the privilege of engaging viewers before they choose what to watch, before audiences splinter into apps. And if you think about the problem for marketers, a lot of it is attention fragmentation. So our Home Screen is a huge opportunity because it really differentiates us.
Jason Bazinet: That’s great. Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. One moment for our next question, please. And it comes from the line of Barton Crockett with Rosenblatt. Please proceed.
Barton Crockett: Okay. Thanks for taking my question. I was curious about sports, which has been a theme you’ve been touching on a lot. And in particular, I mean, there’s been some media reports perhaps that Roku could be looking at buying some sports rights directly. I think there was something recently about the Major League Baseball Sunday lead-off that was on Peacock, and you guys have done something at small scale, I think it was Formula E. I’m just wondering, kind of just structurally, is buying sports rights directly at a meaningful level, does that make sense for Roku? It would seem to be questionable given that anyone streaming sports is kind of want to have a deal with you to go through you. I would imagine. So if you could talk through how you see sports rights deals and the role for Roku direct or through kind of third-party kind of intermediaries.
Anthony Wood: Yeah, this is Anthony. I would say the primary — so first of all, we don’t comment on rumors, speculation, that sort of thing. So I can’t comment on that particular rumor. But just your bigger question, like how do we think about sports? I mean, I think the primary way I think about sports is that we’re on a platform and there’s many different streaming services that we distribute on our platform. Many of them have sports. And so — and sports in particular is incredibly fragmented, and viewers just have no idea how to find the game they want to watch or their favorite team or. So the primary opportunity for us is to help our viewers to be the place they go to help them find a sporting event to watch. And now that doesn’t mean — we also have content that we monitize — that we license directly.
We have rev share content. We have direct license content. We have Roku originals. So, we’ve done, like you mentioned, Formula E. I mean, the way we think about Roku Originals is a budget of content — budget for content that we either produce or have more exclusive relationships around. So — and there’s — we did things like the Rich Eisen show, which we — which is a Roku Original that we integrate into the Sports Zone. We also look at sponsorships for the Sports Zone. We also think about, well, that is a place where we could put video ads. I mean — so for us, it’s really the experience of helping viewers find content. We also do licensed content and produce content and so that also could end up in our Sports Zone. But the primary goal is to be just to go to a place for a viewer to find what to watch and then to monetize that whole experience when they figure out what they want to watch.
And then if they end up watching something that we have licensed directly, then we monetize that as well.
Barton Crockett: Okay. All right. That’s great. And then if I could squeeze in just one other. I was just curious if you could give us an update on what you’re seeing in terms of the endemic kind of media marketing partners at this point. There’s been a headwind historically, but that business is some ways kind of normalizing and in some ways still going through some structural issues with some of the media companies and the cost-cutting at the streaming services. So what are you seeing in that kind of market right now for you guys?
Anthony Wood: Yeah, Charlie, do want to take that?
Charlie Collier: Great. Thanks, Barton. Look, we have a large M&E business, and good news is we’re really good at it, and Roku is really the best place for marketers to build audiences. So simply put, we build content companies’ businesses. Now, I think you used the right word. Obviously, the market has been normalizing versus what it used to be. And so our efforts have been to monetize our Home Screen the way Anthony described. And we’re now focused on all verticals as we continue to diversify and successfully sell inventory that was previously utilized nearly exclusively by M&E advertisers. So we’re also growing engagement and monetization by creating new experiences on the Home Screen. Actually, Anthony mentioned The Rich Eisen Show.
So a notable example worth sharing is BMW sponsorship of The Rich Eisen Show, which included marquee ad on our Home Screen, as well as custom advertising within Roku City. Of course, they sponsored his live show. By the way, he’s at the draft this week for us and doing live shows from there. And then our partnership with BMW is growing. So our Home Screen is being deployed beyond M&E and for the client, we’re enhancing brand visibility and engagement.
