How the Home Screen Became the Most Valuable Real Estate in Streaming with Looper Insights CEO, Lucas Bertand

Why Roku Updated The Home Screen

Tim Rowe, State of Streaming 0:00

Welcome back to this day of streaming podcast. I'm your host, Tim Rowe, and today's conversation is a part two to the conversation earlier this week with Roku VP of Product Experience, Preston Smalley, this conversation with Looper Insights CEO and founder Lucas Bertrand. And what we're going to unpack is really the data behind the user experience and the user TV operating system. So if you want to go deeper on the user journey from how someone finds the content and ultimately sees the ad, where they start their streaming experience, then this is a great part two to the conversation earlier this week with Roku's VP of product experience, Preston Smalley. Enjoy this conversation with Looper Insight CEO, Lucas Bertrand. Lucas Bertrand, we just caught up with Preston Smalley. He's the VP of product experience at Roku. You would have heard that out earlier this week. Roku releasing their first new home screen in a decade, which I think that the headline shocks people. Wait, what Roku hasn't released a new home screen in 10 years? But based on the insight that 82% of users want their TV to know what they want to watch next, welcome back to the show.

Lucas Bertrand, Looper Insights 1:19

Yeah, thank you. G'day, team. Good to be back.

Tim Rowe, State of Streaming 1:23

Good to have you back. And this is something that I know Looper is obsessed with understanding, which is the user experience, the user interface, how we connect to our connected TVs and ultimately stream the content that we love. What stood out about this conversation to you?

Lucas Bertrand, Looper Insights 1:39

Well, a number of things. I mean, one, the the 10-year piece, right? I mean, it was like, okay, like sure. Yeah, I I was surprised, but I'm super happy that they're doing it. And I'm actually really excited because you know, they got a hundred million audience in the US, right?

Tim Rowe, State of Streaming 1:56

I mean, it's I don't know, every couple of houses is just about everyone connected to uh to the internet has some sort of relationship with Roku.

Lucas Bertrand, Looper Insights 2:05

Absolutely. And and so there's such an important company in this space, and to you know, be doing that that

Sports Hubs And The Fragmentation Problem

Lucas Bertrand, Looper Insights 2:12

update. You know, we we also saw recent updates from Fire TV, also another really important company in the space, to add these innovations that they're doing. For example, we saw the sports hubs, they did that uh NHL one. I know we've got the World Cup, obviously. You know, June. June's a busy sports month. It's a crazy busy sports month, and that's just so important for users. And I think sports is like the the almost the best analogy for the problems that these user interfaces are having to deal with, right? Which is fragmentation of viewing and options. Like I'm a fan of a team, how do I go and watch that team? And you know, right now there's probably half a dozen broadcasters, there's YouTube, they've all got different rights and different segments, different languages uh that you can watch the World Cup in, and to be able to bring all of that together into a coherent space where I as a fan can go and more easily watch my team. That's the outcome that we need.

Tim Rowe, State of Streaming 3:20

It's a great point. Being able to simplify that down for the fan to find ultimately the content that that we want to find, the team that we want to follow, the league that we want to follow. We've got right now, we've got the the Stanley Cup final, we've got the NBA finals, we've got World Cup starts today on the day that we're recording this. We'll be releasing it a week after the World Cup is underway. We've got the Tour de France coming up, we've got a lot of different sporting events going on. So it was great to catch up with Preston and to hear what they're doing on the on the hub side of the business.

Media Placement Value Explained

Tim Rowe, State of Streaming 3:55

Some of your Q1 research around media placement value. Maybe can you describe to us what the MPV metric is? And then I'd like to spend some time talking about what you observed, some some interesting insights about the NBA, about the NHL, and specifically about what Roku did in the Winter Olympics, and maybe that can can tease what we expect to see here in Q2. Can you teach us about MPV?

Lucas Bertrand, Looper Insights 4:20

Yeah, so look, MPV, media placement value. And in its simplest form, it's looking at what is the local value of ads in the market. So the CPM that you would typically pay Roku to get placement on their homepage. It's looking at the number of devices in the market. So we talk about the hundred million number, that's a huge number of devices. So their market, if you like, is worth more than someone else who might have 50 million, right? It should be worth potentially twice as much. The third variable is around engagement. Now, maybe Roku has of their devices, it might not be the main device in the living room because people who have Roku's love them and they have half a dozen of them. So maybe not all of them are turned on every day, right?

Tim Rowe, State of Streaming 5:12

So maybe the engagement I've got two plugged in, one that I use, I've got one in a in a in a closet over here. I've got at least three Roku devices that I know of, definitely one that I use every day. And I'm just a a single dad. Uh, so I can imagine that that compounds at family scale.

Lucas Bertrand, Looper Insights 5:30

That's right. And so, you know, uh as a result, that changes the media placement value equation, which is where we say that these placements are worth a certain amount of dollars. What we're really trying to get to, dollars is helpful because we all understand dollars, is how many estimated impressions are you likely to generate from being placed on the home page of a Roku versus a Fire TV versus Xfinity or a Samsung.

Tim Rowe, State of Streaming 5:59

Okay.

Lucas Bertrand, Looper Insights 6:00

So that's really what we're trying to do. It helps streamers, it helps endemic advertisers, it helps platforms understand the relative value. And when they are putting together a strategy to go, I'm launching this new movie, I've got this new sports event, or I've got a new TV series, and how do I want to where do I put my budget to maximize viewership or gain the most new subscribers or sell the most ads? Then they can use media placement value to understand where they can make those investments and leverage them the most to get those outcomes.

Tim Rowe, State of Streaming 6:39

It's interesting to start thinking about then maybe the the connected TV home screen as maybe like one of the most valuable websites.

Lucas Bertrand, Looper Insights 6:48

Yeah.

Tim Rowe, State of Streaming 6:49

Would would that be would that be a a fair equivalent?

Lucas Bertrand, Looper Insights 6:52

I think so. I think so, right? I mean, how much time is spent on that homepage? You know, it's the it's a lot of time, uh, mainly because people are searching around trying to trying to find things. Trying to find the thing. It takes takes a while. I mean, maybe it shouldn't be there, they shouldn't be there for so long, right? You know, you do hear of different companies talking about our job is to get you in and watching as quickly as possible. I think that's true. That is the job. At the same time, they also want to show you their wares. So it's a little bit like I walk into the shop and I do want you to walk down the aisle so you can see all the beautiful products that we've got. So you put them in your mind for later. But when you get to the end of the shelf, that's the thing that you really want to get. That's kind of helpful to be able to show people along the way what you have so that they want to come back later on and watch something else.

Tim Rowe, State of Streaming 7:49

Great. How about

Is The CTV Home Screen A Website

Tim Rowe, State of Streaming 7:50

how about AI? What's the role of AI? It's something that Roku's thinking about and obviously has incorporated into this update, but the role of AI and discoverability, do you have thoughts there?

Lucas Bertrand, Looper Insights 8:02

Look, from our perspective, it it's about how to how do you simplify things and natural language, gen AI, for example, is really helpful in that regard. The Roku piece, they're adding in a voice chat so that you can say, Hey, is this a a movie that my wife and I might might want to watch? Now, initially it may not be brilliant at knowing who you and your wife are and what you really like to watch, or you know, where the Venn diagram crosses and you both love things. But over time, if we keep asking those questions, it will learn and it will start surfacing up the key things that that we would love to watch together. And that's brilliant.

AI Voice Chat For Better Discovery

Lucas Bertrand, Looper Insights 8:48

And what I love about it is it's releasing a feature that can improve over time, and it won't be 10 years to the next update. You know, it's gonna be happening daily, and that's brilliant, right? That's what we want. We need those iterations to happen faster to help improve this whole discovery journey.

Tim Rowe, State of Streaming 9:07

Lucas, something that was really interesting that Preston shared was how viewership for the Winter Olympics actually outpaced some of the summer games. And in your Q1 report, it looked at the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics, some of the media placement value. Really, they they generate $36 million in MPV, and then a big chunk of that on Roku specifically. We talked earlier in the conversation about June being a big sports month, the summer just being packed with with really tentpole sporting events. What do you see on the horizon? What do you expect to see in Q2 and and later this year?

Lucas Bertrand, Looper Insights 9:46

Well, look, I mean, firstly to that winter Olympics piece. I mean, what was it called? For Fabulous February or something, but universe? I think so. But they did a great job on that. And we saw that in the data, you know, they saw it in the data. You know, it's no surprise, right? The more prominence that you're giving, the the that was like one of their first hubs that that they did. You know, it was a really fantastic presentation. Just made it easy. If you want to watch the Winter Olympics, go to the Winter Olympics Hub. It's all there. Uh that's yeah, really a really interesting template for them to continue building on, you know, both for MBC, for Peacock and Roku, as well as the as the OEM. And we're going to see that being emulated by other user interfaces. It's just such an effective way to deliver a good experience for the end user. So, you know, going into like the World Cup, for example, even more fragmented because you've got so many broadcasters that are actually

Olympics Proof And World Cup Complexity

Lucas Bertrand, Looper Insights 10:47

have got rights. You know, you've got Spanish language with Telemondo, for example. You've got this new YouTube, I think it's like the first 10 minutes of the every match can be streamed on channels owned by uh like their media partners. Just the first 10 minutes? I mean, that's going to be a really interesting top of funnel to get perhaps younger users into watching you know World Cup on broadcasts. If they can do that linkage, that'll be really interesting. But again, it's this really fragmented piece. So how do we condense that down, simplify, enable people to find their team, their country that they're going to be so passionate about, and make sure that they don't miss a you know a second of it.

Tim Rowe, State of Streaming 11:32

And and do you have do you have a sense of what's interesting, I think, about Looper is that you're you're really monitoring all of the CTV OEMs to kind of see what is on the screen. Are you starting to see some of those things materialize already? I know that when this episode comes out, we'll be a week into the World Cup. So probably uh, you know, this is this is changing rapidly. I think even some deals were were announced late last night. Yeah. Um, just just just just a day before we go live. So, right, keeping track of where the heck can I watch it. The answer is everywhere, which is also sometimes not an answer. It sometimes sometimes makes it even harder. What are you seeing? Any anything early that you can tease anyone that you see doing a great job or maybe doing something unique in the data?

Lucas Bertrand, Looper Insights 12:22

Well, I look I I think the the the data's just coming in. This is this is real time. Live time. That's right. For our clients who we give the data to early to make sure that they can fix things, you know, we are already seeing certain errors, you know, creeping in because you know, these things are real, they're happening in real time. So people are posting, you know, the time of the match or the location, or there's a delay because, yeah, like it got rained off

Live Metadata Errors And What Comes Next

Lucas Bertrand, Looper Insights 12:52

yesterday. Oh wow, sure right now. So when those things happen, then everyone's got to update all the metadata, the the titles need to be updated, you know, it needs to be said there's a delay happening. You know, it's not quite Trump's coming to the next game, so get there two hours earlier. But you know, these things are a moving feast because they are live events. So that makes it a lot harder to get really clear, accurate information to the end user. And that's part of what we're monitoring and surfacing up to our partners.

Tim Rowe, State of Streaming 13:25

I I hadn't even considered that like live time health monitoring for such a such a big event, just having visibility into okay, the the time change because there is a weather delay. Do we have this properly signposted in all of the places? I I think that that is definitely something we might have to do a follow-up on. When does the Q2 report come out? When should we be looking for that?

Lucas Bertrand, Looper Insights 13:53

I that is gonna be probably in mid-July, I would say.

Tim Rowe, State of Streaming 13:58

All right, great. Well, we will uh we'll we'll keep everyone posted on the Q2 report as it comes out. We're certainly uh watching, I think, as fans globally tuned into this moment, lots more sports coming up on the horizon. Lucas, what are you most excited about? What are you gonna be watching?

Lucas Bertrand, Looper Insights 14:16

I'd like to see Australia get up, but um it's probably a little unlikely in in the World Cup. I'm also based here in the UK. I now have a British passport, which I traveled on for the first time. So um go England, yeah. So we'll be rooting for the for the Brits, and uh, I think they got a good shot. So that's gonna be pretty exciting. I mean, this is like the biggest event, it's like a a an a Super Bowl every day, right? It's just massive.

Tim Rowe, State of Streaming 14:43

We were looking at three Super Bowls a day for a month, you know it's crazy.

Lucas Bertrand, Looper Insights 14:48

It's it's that's insane. So yeah, and it looked great that it's in the US. I'm really hopeful that it that it goes really well and smoothly for everyone involved.

Tim Rowe, State of Streaming 14:59

Yes, lots of I'm in the New Jersey, uh, I'm in New Jersey, so the New York tri-state area, every DOT highway sign, prepare for traffic, prepare for traffic, prepare for traffic. So, and there's a heat wave. This is the opening week weekend. We've got a little bit of a heat wave here, so it will be interesting. And we're subscribed, Lucas. Thanks so much for this great update. And uh we'll we'll stay we'll stay in touch. We'll be looking for that Q2 report. We'll have you back to review that and continue this conversation. Thanks so much for being here.

Lucas Bertrand, Looper Insights 15:28

Wonderful. Always a pleasure, Tim. Thank you.

Tim Rowe, State of Streaming 15:30

Cheers. If you found this conversation to be helpful, please share it with a colleague or a client. Start a conversation yourself today, and we'll see you all next time.