Roku’s advertising-driven platform business reached $4.15 billion in platform revenue for full-year 2025 — an 18% year-over-year increase — with advertising comprising an estimated 70–80% of that total. The company’s video advertising grew faster than both the U.S. OTT market and the broader digital ad market in 2025, according to Standard Media Index data. For 2026, Roku has guided platform revenue to $4.89 billion (18% growth), with total company revenue projected at $5.50 billion. Roku’s landmark advertising partnership with Amazon, AI-powered creative tools targeting 100,000 SMB advertisers, and the explosive growth of The Roku Channel position the company as the dominant force in the $38 billion U.S. CTV advertising market.
Platform Revenue: The Ad Engine
Roku’s platform segment — which includes advertising sales, streaming services distribution, and content licensing — is the company’s primary revenue driver. Advertising makes up approximately 70–80% of platform revenue, with the remainder from subscription revenue-sharing and content deals.
Annual Platform Revenue Growth
| Year | Platform Revenue | YoY Growth |
| 2020 | $1.27B | +71% |
| 2021 | $2.30B | +81% |
| 2022 | $2.68B | +17% |
| 2023 | $2.93B | +9% |
| 2024 | $3.51B | +20% |
| 2025 | $4.15B | +18% |
| 2026 (Guidance) | $4.89B | +18% |
Full-year 2025 platform revenue of $4.15 billion was driven by continued strength in video advertising and streaming services distribution activities. Roku raised its platform revenue outlook multiple times during 2025 — from an initial $3.95 billion to $4.075 billion at Q2, then $4.11 billion at Q3 — ultimately delivering $4.15 billion.
Quarterly Platform Revenue (2024–2025)
| Quarter | 2024 | 2025 | YoY Growth |
| Q1 | $755M | $881M | +17% |
| Q2 | $824M | $975M | +18% |
| Q3 | $908M | $1,065M | +17% |
| Q4 | $1,035M | $1,224M | +18% |
Q4 2025 platform revenue of $1.224 billion was the highest ever, exceeding the analyst estimate of $1.18 billion. Platform gross margin held at approximately 52.8% in Q4, with full-year platform gross profit reaching roughly $2.14 billion.
Advertising Revenue Estimates
Roku does not separately disclose advertising revenue from platform revenue. However, multiple analyst estimates provide useful breakdowns:
- Morgan Stanley Research (April 2024 estimate): Roku advertising revenue of ~$2.1 billion in 2024, projected to rise to $2.3 billion in 2025 and $2.6 billion in 2026, with an 11% CAGR from 2023–2027.
- Omdia (September 2024): Roku projected to generate $2.8 billion in CTV advertising revenue in 2024, rising to $5.1 billion by 2029, including FAST, CTV UI ads, and third-party inventory shares.
- MediaPost: Advertising represents approximately 70–80% of Roku’s platform revenue. Applying this range to the 2025 platform figure of $4.15 billion implies $2.9–$3.3 billion in advertising revenue for 2025.
- Roku stated that advertising accounted for 67% of platform revenue as far back as its 2017 IPO filing. That share has grown substantially as the platform scaled.
Historical Quarterly Advertising Revenue (Q3 Benchmarks)
| Period | Q3 Ad Revenue | YoY Growth |
| Q3 2016 | $22M | — |
| Q3 2017 | $58M | +158% |
| Q3 2018 | $100M | +74% |
| Q3 2019 | $179M | +79% |
| Q3 2020 | $319M | +78% |
| Q3 2021 | $583M | +82% |
| Q3 2022 | $670M | +15% |
| Q3 2023 | $787M | +17% |
These figures, from Roku’s public filings, show the trajectory from a $22 million quarterly business in 2016 to nearly $800 million by Q3 2023. The 2022 growth slowdown reflected the broader post-pandemic advertising pullback, while recovery accelerated into 2024–2025.
Video Advertising Outperformance
Roku consistently claims its video advertising is growing faster than the broader market. Key data points for 2025:
- In every quarter of 2025, Roku reported that video advertising on its platform grew faster YoY than both the U.S. OTT ad market and the broader digital ad market, citing Standard Media Index (SMI) data.
- Advertising revenues excluding the media and entertainment vertical grew faster than overall platform revenue in Q1 2025.
- In Q2 2025, advertising growth outpaced Roku’s overall platform segment — implying advertising grew faster than 18%.
- Roku captures approximately 1 in every 2 CTV ad impressions served in the United States.
- Despite strong ad performance, Roku is estimated to be only about 50% sold out on its total available ad inventory, indicating substantial upside as demand catches up to supply.
The Roku Channel: Ad Revenue Powerhouse
The Roku Channel is the company’s owned-and-operated FAST (Free Ad-Supported Streaming TV) service and a critical driver of advertising revenue, since Roku retains 100% of ad inventory on its own channel.
- #2 free ad-supported streaming app in the U.S. by usage, second only to YouTube, per Nielsen.
- Accounted for 6.3% of all TV streaming in the U.S. in December 2025, a record high — up from 4.6% in December 2024.
- Hours spent on The Roku Channel surged 84% YoY in Q1 2025, with over 85% of viewing driven by Roku’s promotional home screen interface rather than direct app clicks.
- The Roku Channel accounted for 5.4% of total U.S. TV streaming time in June 2025 (per Nielsen’s The Gauge), growing through the year to the 6.3% December peak.
- The Channel remained the #2 app by engagement on the Roku platform in the U.S. throughout all four quarters of 2025.
U.S. CTV Advertising Market Context
Roku’s advertising business operates within the rapidly expanding U.S. CTV advertising market:
| Year | U.S. CTV Ad Spend | YoY Growth |
| 2024 | $28.6B (actual) | — |
| 2025 | $33.35B | +16% |
| 2026 | ~$38B (projected) | +14% |
| 2027 | ~$42B | +11% |
| 2028 | $46.89B | — |
| 2029 | ~$51B | — |
U.S. CTV ad spending is projected to reach approximately $38 billion in 2026, growing 14% from 2025’s $33.35 billion, according to eMarketer. The IAB separately forecasts 13.8% U.S. CTV ad spend growth in 2026. CTV is projected to surpass traditional linear TV ad spending for the first time by 2028.
Roku’s estimated share of the total CTV advertising market was approximately $2.8 billion out of $6.65 billion in platform-level CTV ad revenue in 2024 (per Omdia’s narrower CTV platform market definition), representing roughly 42% market share at the platform level. Samsung ranked second at $1.35 billion.
In Q4 2020, Roku accounted for 46% of CTV programmatic advertising spending worldwide.
Amazon Ads Partnership
In June 2025, Roku and Amazon announced a landmark CTV advertising partnership — the largest in the industry:
- Gives advertisers access to approximately 80 million U.S. CTV households through Amazon’s DSP — over 80% of all U.S. CTV households, per Comscore.
- Combines audiences across Roku and Fire TV operating systems, including The Roku Channel, Prime Video, Disney+, Tubi, Paramount+, HBO Max, and others.
- Early test results showed 40% more unique viewers reached with the same budget and nearly 30% fewer repetitive ads.
- Advertisers saw 3x higher return on ad spend (ROAS) in early trials.
- A shared identifier enables cross-platform measurement and frequency control across streaming services.
- The integration launched in Q4 2025 through Amazon’s DSP.
Oppenheimer upgraded Roku partly on this partnership, projecting it could significantly boost ad spending into 2026.
Roku Ads Manager & SMB Expansion
Roku is aggressively expanding its advertiser base through self-serve tools and AI:
- Roku Ads Manager launched in September 2024 as a direct self-service CTV advertising solution targeting performance marketers.
- Features a first-to-market Shopify integration, enabling self-service shoppable campaigns where viewers can check out products on-screen using Roku Pay.
- In September 2025, CFO Dan Jedda announced plans to scale from ~200 top advertisers to 100,000 advertisers, targeting the SMB market previously locked out of CTV.
- Generative AI tools enable SMBs to create professional TV commercials in minutes, dramatically lowering the cost and complexity barrier.
- Early SMB campaigns on Roku Ads Manager showed conversion rates above 30%.
- LolaVie (Jennifer Aniston’s hair care brand) used Roku Ads Manager for its first TV campaign and reported a 40% lift in sales.
- In Q3 2025, 90% of new advertisers on the platform came from performance marketing backgrounds — historically social and search advertisers now entering CTV.
Roku Data Cloud & Ad Tech Stack
Roku launched Roku Data Cloud in January 2025 to give advertisers, agencies, and partners access to proprietary TV data for planning, activation, and measurement:
- Built on Roku’s secure clean room and Roku Exchange for programmatic inventory access.
- Launch partners include Innovid, iSpot.TV, Omnicom Media Group, PMG, and Yahoo DSP.
- Adobe Real-Time CDP Collaboration integration launched in April 2025, enabling search-and-social-style planning, activation, and measurement on CTV.
- AppsFlyer integration in September 2025 provides cross-platform measurement across CTV and mobile.
- FreeWheel partnership expands transparency and demand access to Roku’s premium CTV inventory.
- DSP integrations with Amazon DSP and The Trade Desk are widening programmatic access to Roku’s logged-in inventory of 90+ million households.
Shoppable & Interactive Advertising
Roku is pioneering commerce-enabled CTV advertising:
- Roku Action Ads enable viewers to press “OK” on their remote to receive product information via text, sign up for newsletters, or trigger other actions.
- With Shopify integration, viewers can purchase products directly on-screen using Roku Pay, with pre-populated payment and shipping details.
- A joint study with Dentsu found that 72% of viewers pay closer attention to ads aligned with their interests, ads with coupons/delivery drive 58% higher brand recall, and 50% of streamers would add products to a cart directly from their TV.
- Instacart partnership achieved 4x ROAS using Roku interactive ad formats paired with first-party data targeting.
- Interactive ad share peaked above 18% of total ads during key quarters on The Roku Channel.
- Roku is expanding shoppable ads across FAST channels and live programming as a roadmap priority.
Political Advertising Impact
Political advertising played a notable role in Roku’s 2024 ad revenue:
- In Q4 2024, political advertising comprised about 6% of platform revenue.
- Even excluding political advertising, Roku’s platform revenue grew 19% YoY in Q4 2024.
- Media analyst Brian Wieser noted that excluding the political advertising tailwind from 2024, Roku’s 2025 growth would have been several percentage points higher on a like-for-like basis.
2026 Advertising Revenue Outlook
Multiple factors point to continued acceleration in Roku’s advertising revenue in 2026:
- Platform revenue guidance: $4.89 billion (18% growth), ahead of analysts’ $4.66 billion estimate.
- Total revenue guidance: $5.50 billion, above the Street’s $5.34 billion estimate.
- Net income guidance: $325 million, implying significant margin expansion.
- Roku management expects to maintain double-digit platform revenue growth while expanding both operating and net income margins in 2026 and beyond.
- The Amazon DSP integration, fully operational from Q4 2025, is expected to contribute a “gradual ramp” of incremental ad revenue through 2026.
- Scaling to 100,000 SMB advertisers via AI-generated ads could unlock new advertising budgets traditionally allocated to search and social.
- The U.S. CTV advertising market is projected to grow ~14% to $38 billion in 2026, providing a strong market tailwind.
- The path to 100 million streaming households in 2026 expands Roku’s addressable ad inventory and data assets.
- The FIFA World Cup 2026 and other major live events are expected to boost streaming hours and ad demand.
Applying the 70–80% advertising share to the $4.89 billion platform revenue guidance yields an estimated $3.4–$3.9 billion in advertising revenue for 2026. Morgan Stanley’s earlier estimate of $2.6 billion for 2026 now appears conservative given the platform’s stronger-than-expected trajectory.
Competitive Landscape
| Platform | 2024 CTV Ad Revenue (Omdia) | 2029 Projection |
| Roku | $2.8B | $5.1B |
| Samsung | $1.35B | $3.0B |
| Total CTV market | $6.65B | $13.5B |
Roku faces intensifying competition from several directions:
- Amazon Fire TV: 65% YoY growth in device share, plus deep integration with Amazon’s retail data and ad ecosystem.
- Netflix ad tier: Surpassed 94 million global ad-supported users by May 2025.
- Walmart/Vizio: Walmart’s $2.3 billion acquisition gives it CTV ad scale combined with retail media capabilities.
- Samsung Ads: The #2 CTV platform globally, projected to reach $3 billion by 2029.
- Google/YouTube: Dominates FAST and ad-supported streaming by total viewership.
Despite competition, Roku’s structural advantages include its position in 50%+ of U.S. broadband households, its status as the #1 TV streaming OS in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico by hours streamed, and its logged-in authenticated user base enabling precision ad targeting.
