OK, How Many People are REALLY Watching Roku?
Last month Roku reported selling their 10 millionth Roku player. That was exciting news for them and for the industry — it means connected TV is really catching on. People everywhere are “shaving,” or “cutting” the cable cord; that is, cutting back on cable services or eliminating them altogether, respectively, and turning to services like Roku (mainly Roku) for their home entertainment needs. Not that using Roku is all about cutting the cord, this Roku user likes to think of it as an expansion to cable. I believe it’s only a matter of time before cable boxes are shipped with a Roku button right next to the DVR button.
Ten million units. Wow. Yet, I couldn’t help but wonder how many actual people that means — or how many actual sets of eyeballs does 10 million Roku devices equate to? It’s one thing if every person bought their own personal Roku, but that’s not the way it works. In my home, for instance, we have 4 units, shared by 4–6 people at any given time. At the office, we have 6 more units, shared by 12–15 people at any given time.
I practically grew up in the print media business. I designed and later sold advertising for newspapers and magazines. In that business, circulation numbers were audited, but circulation numbers and actual readership numbers were two different things. Whatever circulation was, we often doubled or tripled it when selling ad space because the theory was that one magazine (or newspaper) was read, on average by 2 to 3 people.
No media numbers are perfect or exact. I won’t say they’ll never be, because technology could prove me wrong tomorrow, but for the timebeing all media viewership numbers are only based on “audits,” — or glorified guesstimates. Period.
That said, if we were to apply the same theory to Roku’s 10 million devices, it simply means that, on average, there are currently 20–30 million actual Roku viewers.
In theory, that is, but that theory just doesn’t do it for me. It’s a very broad guesstimate, and I need more, hard data. Especially, if, going forward, we’re to sell people on the prospect of advertising on Roku, we need real numbers (or as real as we can get); something we can take to the bank; something that sounds more official. So, I did a survey….
Now, it would be totally impossible (for me and my tiny company) to poll 10 million Roku owners to see how many people are actually using their devices, and how often they’re using them, but we were able to contact just over 1,000. Out of that, only 397 responded. That is, 397 active Roku owners/users. Good enough.
First, we asked these 397 people how many devices they owned.
397 people accounted for 504 devices, or approximately 1.27 devices per person.
Using that number, and assuming all 10 million units sold weren’t sold to 10 million individuals (I have 4 at home, myself), we can assume that approximately 7,874, 016 of them are actual Roku device owners, owning one or more devices.
(10,000,00 devices divided by 1.27 devices per owner = 7,874,016 owners)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, this doesn’t account for the many Roku owners who upgraded their units, etc., but let’s assume they all passed their old units on to friends and family to enjoy (like I do) or sold them to people on Craigslist (like I also do).
Next we asked them, how many people in their households use/watch a Roku device, daily, for one hour or more.
397 people accounted for 930 individual viewers (sets of eyeballs), or approximately 2.34 viewers per device owner.
Now, assuming 7,874,016 device owners account for 2.54 viewers/users per device, we can guesstimate that approximately 18,425,197 people are actually watching Roku.*
*Daily, for more than one hour per day
That’s a whole lot more than 10 million— nearly twice as much — and that number is growing FAST!
Of course, Roku can only report how many devices they sell. Like any other media, actual viewers are always a guesstimate, and this is the best/only estimate I’ve seen so far in terms of how many people are actually using/watching Roku.
If Roku could release some more numbers, mainly HOW MANY devices are actually connecting regularly — and/or how many registered accounts there are, and an average number of devices per account — we could come to more accurate conclusions. We may even discover there’s WAY MORE than 18+ million viewers.
Going forward, they WILL need to give us something — anything — if we’re to ever build a legitimate advertising industry around the platform beyond streaming (paid-per-view) advertisements. I have dozens of companies jus waiting to advertise, if only we had some concrete viewer stats.
So for now, all we have is my current estimate of 18,425,197 and that will have to do at least until someone does a better study. (Please, someone do a better study.)
By contrast, in 2002, at its peak, AOL, the biggest and baddest Internet service of its time, had 26.7 million users.
Roku’s not there yet, but it IS to the growth of Connected TV what AOL WAS to the growth of Internet, and as we move into what will be the biggest holiday season yet for Roku, I expect those numbers to nearly double over the next year.
There’s no question AOL did its part to build the Internet and change the world. And now Roku is doing the same with connected TV — and it is NO WHERE even close to it’s peak yet.
Connected TV is like the birth of Internet all over again, and it’s happening NOW. Whether you’re “cutting the cord” or simply expanding your content selection, Connected TV, fueled by Roku, will shape the next 20 years as the Internet did the last.
Mark my words.
— P.
Phil Autelitano is founder and CEO of Mediarazzi. We develop content, TV channels and applications for Roku and Connected TV.
www.mediarazzi.com
Phil Autelitano also founded AdNexxt — www.adnexxt.com — a performance-based advertising solution to monetize Roku and connected TV channels.
