- Roku partnered with Warner Bros. Pictures and Mattel for an immersive campaign to advertise the upcoming release of “Barbie” across its platform, in keeping with an organization blog post.
- The effort features a home screen takeover on July 20, “Barbie” imagery across the Roku City screensaver and a banner ad that features the movie trailer and a QR code that viewers can scan to purchase movie tickets.
- The “Barbie” campaign follows Roku’s recent partnership with Shopify that permits viewers to buy products from Shopify merchants directly from their TV through Roku Action ads — one other effort to draw marketers to the platform.
Roku is the most recent company to catch “Barbie” fever within the run-up to the film’s release on July 21. The platform’s immersive campaign looks to tap into viewer excitement for the film, which saw searches throughout the week of June 25 spike four-times higher than average query volumes over the preceding 4 weeks, per Roku’s blog post.
The full-funnel campaign features a “Barbie”-themed placement on Roku’s home screen on July 20 that puts the movie in front of Roku’s greater than 70 million energetic account holders once they power up their devices. The movie will even take over the Roku City screensaver — which 85% of users have watched scroll by — with imagery including Barbie’s Dream house and a “Barbie”-branded movie show. Finally, clicking a “Barbie” banner will allow viewers to see a trailer and scan a QR code to purchase movie tickets.
The campaign comes days after Roku on July 11 announced a partnership that permits viewers to buy directly from Shopify merchants through Roku Action Ads. After seeing an ad for a Shopify merchant, viewers can press “OK” to learn more concerning the product, purchase it directly and checkout using Roku Pay. The seamless integration allows Shopify Merchants to show ad impressions into direct sales, improving the ads’ efficacy.
The “Barbie” campaign and Shopify checkout integration are amongst Roku’s latest efforts to try to attach the streaming platform more directly with retailers and advertisers. Roku this 12 months partnered with DoorDash and Walmart around interactive shoppable ads and with Best Buy around retail media and first-party data optimization.
The company continues to search for monetization opportunities that may speed up revenue growth until the ad market fully recovers, in keeping with the corporate’s letter to shareholders around Q1 2023 earnings. Roku reported 1% revenue growth within the quarter, beating investor expectations, but expects macro uncertainties to persist all year long and proceed to tug on ad sales.
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