Get ready for video ads to invade your Roku home screen

If you use a Roku TV or streaming stick, then we hope you enjoy watching ads. The company plans to introduce video advertisements to the home screen in the near future.

According to a report from Cord Cutters News, Roku CEO Anthony Woods answered questions about ad revenue during the firm’s first quarter 2024 earnings call. During the call, Woods revealed that we could see changes to the platform’s home screen.

“But to give you some examples of the kinds of things we’re looking at on the home screen, on the home screen today, there’s the premier video app we called the Marquee and that traditionally has been a static ad,” Woods explained. “We’re going to add video to that ad. So that will be the first video ad in that we add to the home screen. That will be a big change for us. We’re also testing other types of video ad units, looking at other experiences we can add to the home screen that would be where we can innovate more video advertising. So that’s something we’re looking at.”

It’s unclear what type of ads Roku will show on the home screen. We also don’t know what these “other experiences” could be. However, it’s possible the company could show fullscreen video ads, not unlike the fullscreen ads we see on Amazon’s platform, which rolled out widely last December.

This news arrives not long after a patent was discovered revealing Roku’s exploration into ways to inject ads into video feeds from third-party devices connected to Roku TVs. The patent described technology that could detect when you pause a game, movie, or other media so Roku could serve the user targeted ads.