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In this week’s pod, Dave and Daniel try to figure out who the other ‘David’ is in the Goliath-sized battle between Elon Musk and the three U.S. wireless giants; we check in on Roblox; and we explore the horrifying generative vision of Gossip Goblin
Streaming’s ‘hardware wars’ heat up
With YouTube Shorts set to join the Google TV discovery layer this summer, the competition to control the more visible portions of UX spectrum gets even more intense
Each month, for each of the key global regions it operates in, London-based analytics company Looper Insights publishes its “Streamer of the Month” report, which ranks video content and apps based on how much digital merchandising value they’ve generated.
In Looper’s April SOTM ranker, for the first time, a program from The Roku Channel surfaced in the top 10 — The Reunion: Laguna Beach, a special episode reconvening the cast of the eponymous 20-year-old MTV reality series, finished at No. 6.
Lucas Bertrand, founder and CEO of Looper Insights, wasn’t surprised to see a somewhat obscure reality special from a free ad-supported streaming platform gather as much merchandising visibility as shows situated on large subscription-streaming rivals. Roku, after all, touts more than 100 million households using its operating platform.
“Roku’s hardware presence gives it a built-in merchandising advantage by turning the TV home screen into a promotional engine for Roku Channel content,” Bertrand said. … “It's a particularly clear display of Roku's platform advantage because it shows how quickly Roku can concentrate premium shelf space around its original free, ad-supported programming. That combination of distribution, hardware reach, and merchandising control is what makes Roku's position so powerful.”
