Roku Developer Program

[BradC]

Anyone limit their channels to just roku2 or roku3 to increase exposure?

Since Roku gives highest ranking / exposure on the store channel to those channels that are least compatible, I'm thinking of dropping compatibility with rokuHD to increase ranking and exposure, which should increase the number of people who get to see and try them out.

I suppose I could update the channel to send version info to get some stats, but it seems the way the system is setup now, you are shooting yourself in the foot if you make stuff that runs on the older Rokus.

[Anonymous]

Hi Brad,

What exposure/ranking are you talking about? We don't do anything that automatically promotes channels that are not compatible with legacy Roku players.

[BradC]

Hi Patrick,

The channel store (viewed on the roku box not the web) groups channels by compatibility, so channels that are only compatible with R3 are automatically ranked at the top, only R2-R3 are right below those, etc. If you drop compatibility with the older rokus, you will automatically get a higher ranking in the store, increasing exposure.

I suppose the only real question is whether the increased views from the higher ranking outweighs what one might assume to be a limited audience on the older rokus. I'm assuming so, but was curious as to what others here have experienced.

[DerekHelps]

"BradC" wrote:

The channel store (viewed on the roku box not the web) groups channels by compatibility, so channels that are only compatible with R3 are automatically ranked at the top, only R2-R3 are right below those, etc.

I'm not sure how you arrive at this, I dont see this sort of behavior when I goto the Channel store on the player. For instance, if I go into the 'Games' section, 'Rogue' (compatible with all, I believe) is listed higher than 'Angry Birds Space' (available only on Roku 3 I believe) It seems like it might be based on installs or something similar?

[TheEndless]

"DerekHelps" wrote:

"BradC" wrote:

The channel store (viewed on the roku box not the web) groups channels by compatibility, so channels that are only compatible with R3 are automatically ranked at the top, only R2-R3 are right below those, etc.

I'm not sure how you arrive at this, I dont see this sort of behavior when I goto the Channel store on the player. For instance, if I go into the 'Games' section, 'Rogue' (compatible with all, I believe) is listed higher than 'Angry Birds Space' (available only on Roku 3 I believe) It seems like it might be based on installs or something similar?

It's actually based on usage: viewtopic.php?f=34&t=55959&p=381605#p381605
I suppose it's possible that, since there are more Roku 2/3 users out there, there may be a bias towards those devices, but the majority of the channels I've developed work on all platforms, and I've not noticed lower rankings as a result. In fact, looking through the channel store just now, it looks like the first channel in a lot of the categories are universal channels.

[Anonymous]

"BradC" wrote:
Hi Patrick,

The channel store (viewed on the roku box not the web) groups channels by compatibility, so channels that are only compatible with R3 are automatically ranked at the top, only R2-R3 are right below those, etc. If you drop compatibility with the older rokus, you will automatically get a higher ranking in the store, increasing exposure.

I suppose the only real question is whether the increased views from the higher ranking outweighs what one might assume to be a limited audience on the older rokus. I'm assuming so, but was curious as to what others here have experienced.

That's not what happens, it's based on usage, across our user base. There are very few channels that are only compatible with Roku 3 -- Angry Birds Space is the only one that comes to mind right this second. The only old Roku players which someone might choose to not support are those running 3.1. Not supporting those can have an impact, but it's not as much as you might think, since those make up an ever-decreasing minority if the Roku install base. I can't think of any reason to omit Roku 3 from support for a channel, Channel Store-related or otherwise.

[BradC]

"RokuPatrick" wrote:

That's not what happens.

Yep, it is exactly what happens.

Thanks for taking the time to answer. I had assumed it was intentional, since it has been happening since before the UI upgrade as well, but if it's not intentional, then it's definitely a defect in the store code.


I suppose I'm too much of a stats nerd since it's so obvious to me and apparently invisible to everyone else. hehe. Luckily I find this kind of stuff pretty interesting, so I'll try to demonstrate.



We'll use 2 roku models for the comparison, the r1HD and the Roku2. This should keep things fairly simple. We'll also mostly ignore those 4 or so "special" channels that have their own compatiblity rules for simplicity's sake.


Baseline, the web channel store is a good one, (we'll see why later) let's take the games section as our sample.


If we make a spreadsheet of this info, we get some base info.

open the linked spreadsheet and take a look.


Sheet 1


the "Web Rank" column is the base ranking. This is what we'd expect.

the "R1.x Rank" column is the order on the Roku1(HD). This is also what we'd expect. It's basically the same exact list as the web store, in the same order, with R1 incompatible channels removed.


So far, so good.


On "Sheet2" We've added a "R2 Rank" column listing the channel ranking on the roku2 store.

Look closely. It should be pretty obvious from anayzing this sheet what has happened. Each of the channels that is R1 compatible has been skipped, and only the R2 channels are then ranked in order. After that, the remaining channels are added incrementally at the bottom. This is completely incorrect, and should match the "web order" column.



On the next sheet "Compatibility Order", we have resorted the data by the ranking on the R2 store. It should be pretty obvious here when we look at the web rank and the compatibility what we are looking at.



Summary: the ranking is EXACTLY sorted by compatibility, then original ranking as compared to the Web Store. There is zero overlap. No doubt at all this is what is happening in the R2 and R3 stores. So, if you drop compatibility for the R1+, your channel will get a higher ranking and more visibility on the roku. (But, if this is a defect that might be fixed, the question is moot)

[kc8pql]

No one else cares...

[BradC]

never said you had to. Thanks for being rude though.

[kc8pql]

The title of your thread is rude...