Roku Developer Program

[renojim]

Since the start of the new year my daily ad reports are showing about a 50% decrease in impressions. When I try my channels or other channels that I know are using Roku for their ad fulfillment I see no ads. Checking my logs I see an inordinate number of requests that return valid ad pods with no ads. Is anyone else seeing this?

Did some contract expire at the end of the year and wasn't renewed? Did someone at Roku drop the ball? I'm hoping this is just a glitch, but if anyone knows of an alternate ad supplier that is more reliable than Roku I'd like to hear about it.

-JT

[necrotek]

I am seeing this too.  Something similar happened in in October but not this drastic. I am down to low double digit impressions yesterday. I think someone has completely dropped the ball in the ad department. I have a channel that was published 5 weeks ago and has not reported any ad impressions while my tracking says that ads have been requested several hundred times a day. I have emailed partner success to report this issue. Anyone else seeing this should do so as well. 

[NB_]

I hear this might be due to

[...] a combination of low demand,
excess of supply partners (mostly due to increased viewing in winter months),
and specific campaign requirements (e.g. audience targeting).

Please email adSupport at roku.com to discuss individual case.

[renojim]

"RokuNB" wrote:
I hear this might be due to

[...] a combination of low demand,
excess of supply partners (mostly due to increased viewing in winter months),
and specific campaign requirements (e.g. audience targeting).

Please email adSupport at roku.com to discuss individual case.

Thanks for checking into this, but it sounds like you were fed a line.
"low demand"?  Huh?  The demand for ads is there, there's just not any returned from getAds().
"excess of supply partners" and "increased viewing"?  This would be a good thing, would it not or does "supply partner" not refer to the supply of ads?
Only the third point seems like it could affect the impression rate and why the drastic effect now?

I already tried partnerSuccess (which seems a bit of a misnomer).  I'll see what adSupport has to say.

-JT

[rovidx_media]

I can only speak to my experience with Adsense on YouTube, but there is always a big drop in January.    I'm guessing this is due to RokuCo not selling much for advertising this month.   I've noticed both Roku and my other ad provider are only filling about 5 - 10% of my inventory.

[NB_]

"renojim" wrote:
Thanks for checking into this, but it sounds like you were fed a line.
"low demand"?  Huh?  The demand for ads is there, there's just not any returned from getAds().
"excess of supply partners" and "increased viewing"?  This would be a good thing, would it not or does "supply partner" not refer to the supply of ads?
Only the third point seems like it could affect the impression rate and why the drastic effect now?

Ad terminology is confusing.
As far as AdOps are concerned, you are in the "ad supply" category, your apps provide "inventory" that is to be "filled" based on demand from the advertisers.
Demand = Advertisers, they haven't shelled out for ads in 2018 yet
Supply = App/Channel Publishers
Confusing, i know.

[renojim]

"RokuNB" wrote:
Confusing, i know.

You can say that again! I'm still trying to wrap my head around the term "impression".

Thanks. Still waiting to hear more from adSupport. I really hope this is a temporary problem; I could really use all those pennies right now! 🙂

-JT

[NB_]

"renojim" wrote:
I'm still trying to wrap my head around the term "impression".

"Impression" is the event when a display ad (image) or video ad starts getting displayed on screen.
(For more details, try http://dvglossary.www2.iab.com/ )
That's also the accepted billing criterion in the ad industry. There are additional ad measures (like ad completion, quartiles), which are used for other purposes, to determine quality/engagement/etc

[incsays]

We have been in this for a few years now. This is something that happens every January. Companies generally are redoing their ad budgets for the year in January, so the ad suppliers are waiting on them. The bigger companies like Hulu, Crackle, Comedy Central and so on have independent Ad departments that are selling ads to cover this time. For us non-behemoth channels, January is just a suck month. Usually starts picking back up around the end of the third week, but does not fully recover until around the second week in Feb. 

[renojim]

Looking at my reports from last January, I do see a bit of a drop off at the start of the month (year). It wasn't as drastic as it has been this year and I don't recall seeing so many instances of empty ad pods. I'll just try to be patient and hope things turn around soon.

-JT