Roku - Earnings Call - Q3 2025

Executive Summary

• Roku delivered a clean beat and returned to GAAP profitability, with total revenue of $1.2106B (+14% YoY), diluted EPS of $0.16, and positive operating income ($9.5M), the first since 2021. Platform revenue grew 17% YoY to $1.0646B, while The Roku Channel remained the #2 app by engagement in the U.S..
• Versus S&P Global consensus, Roku beat Q3 revenue ($1.2106B vs $1.2062B*) and EPS ($0.16 vs $0.0813*); management raised FY guidance for Platform revenue to $4.11B and Adjusted EBITDA to $395M, and guided Q4 revenue to ~$1.35B. Values retrieved from S&P Global.*
• Mix and execution drove margin resilience: Platform gross margin was 51.5% (50 bps above outlook), while Devices gross margin was -15.7% in line with outlook; Adjusted EBITDA rose to $116.9M (9.7% margin).
• Strategic catalysts include deepening third‑party DSP integrations (Amazon ramp starting in Q4/2026), rapid SMB/performance traction in Roku Ads Manager, and subscription momentum (Premium Subscriptions and Howdy SVOD).

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• Achieved positive operating income ahead of schedule and first time since 2021; net income of $24.8M with diluted EPS $0.16. “We delivered strong Q3 results, achieving positive operating income ahead of schedule” — Anthony Wood & Dan Jedda.
• Platform strength: revenue +17% YoY to $1.0646B, gross margin 51.5% (50 bps above outlook), driven by video advertising and streaming services distribution; streaming hours +4.5B YoY to 36.5B.
• Demand diversification: deeper DSP integrations (Amazon), measurement partners (AppsFlyer, FreeWheel), and Ads Manager momentum (≈90% of Ads Manager advertisers were new to Roku in Q3). “We want to be open and interoperable and be deeply integrated with all DSPs… the Amazon integration… ramp well into 2026” — Charlie Collier.

What Went Wrong

• Devices remained a drag: revenue -5% YoY to $146.0M; gross margin -15.7% (gross loss of $22.9M), in line with outlook and reflecting structural seasonality/tariffs headwinds.
• Media & Entertainment (M&E) ad vertical still pressured; while theatrical improved, industry broadly remains challenged, limiting upside contribution versus video/performance advertising.
• Amazon DSP contribution is just beginning; management cautioned near‑term impact is modest, contemplated in Q4 guide, with greater lift expected during 2026.

Transcript

Speaker 4

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Roku's third quarter 2025 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star 11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I'd now like to hand the conference over to Conrad Grodd, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Good afternoon. Welcome to Roku's third quarter 2025 earnings call. Joining us on today's call are Anthony Wood, Roku's Founder and CEO, Dan Jedda, our CFO and COO, Charlie Collier, President, Roku Media, and Mustafa Ozgen, President, Devices. On this call, we'll make forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks and uncertainties. Please refer to our shareholder letter and periodic SEC filings for risk factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements. We'll also present GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP financial measures are provided in our shareholder letter. Unless otherwise stated, all comparisons will be against the results for the comparable 2024 period. With that, operator, our first question, please.

Speaker 4

Our first question comes from Cory Carpenter with JP Morgan.

Speaker 0

Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for the questions. Anthony, hoping you could expand on the trends you saw this quarter in the platform business and how you're thinking about the growth drivers in 4Q and 2026. Dan, maybe a question for you. You bought back $50 million of shares this quarter, so thought it'd be helpful to hear your latest thoughts on capital allocation priorities given your cash balance. Thank you.

Speaker 1

I would say very good outlook. We feel good about our outlook and also feeling good about next year. To what's driving our platform revenue growth in 2024, we outlined our key monetization initiatives, the general buckets of areas we're focused on to grow our platform revenue. That strategy is working. You can see it in the results, and I think we'll continue to see it for quite a while. The results and the success of our strategy just gives us a lot of confidence that we're going to maintain double-digit platform revenue growth while increasing profitability in 2026 and beyond. Just to recap, the three areas that we're focused on to grow our platform revenue: one is making better use of our home screen, which is a key strategic asset for us. Another one is growing ad demand, and a third is growing our subscription revenue.

In terms of our home screen, like I said, it's a key asset for us. Every Roku customer, which is half of broadband households in the U.S., they turn on their TV and they start their viewing experience with their home screen. It's how they discover and decide what to watch. We're always actually working on improving our home screen. We're always testing changes, and when those changes result in a better viewer experience or better monetization, we roll those changes out. That's ongoing. For example, we added the recommendation row to the top of our home screen recently, and that's working well for us. As we've mentioned before, we are working on a larger update to our home screen. That's in testing. It hasn't rolled out yet, but the testing is going really well and getting a lot of positive feedback. We're being very thoughtful about that.

It affects a lot of viewers, so we want to make sure that it's both a big improvement for all of our viewers as well as an improvement to engagement and monetization. I think we'll see that based on the testing results we're seeing so far. I think that's going to roll out in 2026. Continuous home screen improvements and UI improvements are one of the ways we grow our platform revenue. Another is we're focused on growing our ad business and our ad demand. Our goal is to, or our strategy there is to work with all the major platforms, including all the major DSPs. We announced our relationship with Amazon recently, deeper support with the Amazon DSP. That's just turned on. It's a little early to say, but so far it's looking good.

I'm still very excited that that's going to be a contributor to our business, but it hasn't really ramped up yet. It's just starting to ramp up. Also, on the ad side, we're focused on improving measurement. We announced, for example, this quarter integration with AppsFlyer. Another area we're focused on is Roku Ads Manager, which is our self-serve platform for small and medium-sized businesses, but also really focused on performance marketing. It's a business that's growing fast. It opens up a big new area of advertisers, a big new category of advertisers, a different class of advertisers, as well as performance marketers. That's a big area that we're focused on. We're putting more resources behind that. I think overall we believe we can be the most performant connected TV platform. We have a lot of data.

We have the highest engagement by far in the U.S., and it's an area we're investing in, improving the performance of our ad platform. Subscriptions are doing well for us. Premium subscriptions in particular are doing well, and in Q3, we continue to improve the premium subscription experience. We also added new services. We're always adding new premium subscriptions, but we can add more services in the quarter. We'll be launching more tier-one subscription services and premium subscriptions in 2026. Of course, there's Howdy, which is our latest owned and operated service, which is $3 a month with no ads, an SVOD service. It really taps into a large underserved market, a scenario of the market that's not really targeted with a particular SVOD service. I think it's a very large opportunity for us.

That's also still early, but just like we grew The Roku Channel into a large business over time using our platform, I believe we're going to do that with Howdy as well. That's an area that I'm excited about, but it's still early as well. In terms of capital allocation, let me turn that over to Dan.

Speaker 0

Thanks, Anthony. Thanks for the question, Cory. Let me just start by saying a few things about our financial position and capital allocation. We have $2.3 billion of cash and short-term investments on our balance sheet, a very strong position. We achieved a positive operating income in Q3, the first time since fiscal 2021. Our outlook for Q4 on adjusted EBITDA at $145 million is our highest ever for adjusted EBITDA. For the full year, our EBITDA margins are expected to be a 200 basis point improvement year over year to approximately 8.4%. We expect similar improvement next year. I think I've said several times, we are and will continue to be CapEx light. We're growing our free cash flow faster than our EBITDA. All of this has resulted in a trailing 12-month free cash flow of over $440 million.

We're very strong in terms of free cash flow generation, and we're going to clearly grow from there. Also, in early 2024, we initiated our net share settlement program, offsetting about 40% of gross dilution. Last quarter, as you mentioned, we repurchased $500 million of our stock under our $400 million share repurchase program. Total dilution for Q3 was under 30 basis points, the lowest dilution we've had in any quarter. All this is a way of saying we're very focused on dilution, share buyback, free cash flow. We have a goal of offsetting 100% share of dilution over time, and I certainly see line of sight to that. We'll continue to look at opportunities to expand our business and maximize shareholder value through disciplined capital allocation.

We're investing in all the platform revenue initiatives that Anthony just addressed and talked about, but we're doing so mostly through reallocation of capital. We'll continue to look at maximizing our ROI as we continue to generate this positive free cash flow.

Speaker 4

Our next question comes from Brent Nevin with Bank of America.

Speaker 2

Good afternoon. Thanks for taking the question. Just want to note, in your shareholder letter, you cited progress from third-party DSPs and Roku Ads Manager for advertising. Any way to frame how big each of those businesses are and what their underlying growth rates are? Just to circle back to the opportunity in 2026 for you guys, it seems like you guys are growing 20% organic, ex-political, ex-ASC 606 in Q3. Your guide implies somewhat similar for Q4. It seems like there's a lot of irons in the fire that you just mentioned. Are there offsets that we should also be contemplating or tough comps? It seems like you have momentum in Ads Manager, you have the Amazon DSP ramp, political year, potential improvements in M&E. Just want to make sure we're thinking through all the pieces correctly. Thanks so much.

Speaker 1

Hey, Brent. I think Charlie will answer that question.

Speaker 2

Sure. Why don't I take the DSP portion and Ads Manager portion of the question, then I'll turn it over to Dan. Hi, Brent. Stepping back, our strategy remains that we want to be open and interoperable and be deeply integrated with all DSPs so that we can meet clients anywhere they want to transact. It was totally natural that we would do what you said, which is deepen our integrations across the board. Of course, we announced the Amazon integration as well. To put it in context, we've added dozens of ad tech partners over the last few years from the Yahoo DSP or AppLovin and Whirl to Magnite on the SSP side. Last year, we really continued to deepen our relationships with each of them.

At the heart of your question on third-party DSPs, I think the best comparison is last year we discussed on these calls quite a bit about our UID integration with The Trade Desk. The deepening of our existing relationship with Amazon is very similar to that we talked about last year with The Trade Desk. Our goal with all these partnerships, Brent, is to drive greater efficiency and performance. We are very bullish about our position as the open and interoperable partner in a marketplace with so many walled gardens. In terms of Ads Manager, in the macro, the shift to proof of performance or performance marketing to CTV is a tailwind we love. We like what we're seeing, but I should say it's early days.

Generally speaking, there's a market push towards automation and more sophisticated proof of performance, and Ads Manager, which is our self-service platform, and many of the performance innovations we're building to prove that Roku is the most performant CTV platform. All those are providing tailwinds, but it is very early days. We do like what we see. We see new advertisers coming. We see them staying because their Roku campaigns are performing. In third quarter, approximately 90% of advertisers on Ads Manager were new to Roku, which we very much like as well. Dan, do you want to take the back half of that?

Speaker 0

Yeah. Thanks, Charlie. Thanks for the question, Brent. To answer your question on thoughts on 2026 and are there any offsets, let me just address Q3 and Q4 for a minute. In Q3, we came in at a very strong 17%, actually slightly over 17% growth rate. Our guide is at a 15% growth rate, inclusive of political and Frndly TV. If you back out political and Frndly TV for Q3, that number is 19% year over year. If you back out political and Frndly TV for Q4, it's actually a slight step up from the 19%. We feel really good on how we're going to finish this year. We're going to finish this year very strong. To your question on 2026, obviously, we'll provide further guidance on 2026 after next quarter. Anthony just went over many initiatives. Charlie just touched on many initiatives. You're right.

We have a lot of irons in the fire. Many of them are launched and working. Some of them are yet to be launched. Anthony talked about the home screen, which we're very excited about, and the entire UI, which we're very excited about. We have Roku Ads Manager. We have a lot of new ad products that are performing well. We have premium subscriptions and our overall subscription business performing very well. I would just say I feel very good about entering 2026. I'm very excited for the year.

Speaker 2

Great, thank you so much.

Speaker 4

Our next question comes from Justin Patterson with KeyBank.

Great. Thanks. Good afternoon. Could you expand a little bit more on what this new home screen means for the business? How should we think of it influencing engagement and monetization versus the existing home screen? Stepping back just around the deeper DSP integrations, there have been a lot of investor questions around just what comes after the DSP integration. I'd love to hear about just what other ad product innovation you have coming forward and how you think that'll help sustain platform revenue growth. Thank you.

Speaker 1

Hey, Justin. This is Anthony. In terms of the new home screen, I would say, first of all, we have a very iconic home screen. It looks different. It feels different. It feels simpler. It is simpler to use than our competitors. We're very proud of that. It's also fun, a lot of delight built into our home screen. An important goal for us is to maintain and improve that. We want to keep it iconic. We want to keep it differentiated. We want to make it more delightful. We also want to make it more useful. Our current home screen is, I mean, customers love it. It's very useful, but we can make it even more useful. That's a big goal. We want to increase customer satisfaction with our home screen. We also want it to drive more monetization.

There are lots of things that we're testing that testing does show drives more engagement, increases monetization, whether it's helping get viewers to sign up for more subscriptions or to watch more ad-supported content. Those are all important goals, whether it's more promotion. Those are the two goals for the business: higher viewer satisfaction, more engagement, more monetization. Our testing is showing that we're achieving both of those. We're still testing, optimizing, and like I said, we'll hope to roll that out in 2026. In terms of DSP integrations, what comes next? I'll just say we're not done with DSPs. We do integrate with all the major DSPs, but I still think there's lots of room to continue to deepen those integrations, to increase our business, create stronger business relationships with those partners. We continue to work on that.

In terms of ad products, there's a whole suite of ad products under development. I would say kind of high-level categories. One is we're very focused on performance, delivering on. We already have a platform that is very performant, very measurable, focused on performance and targeting. We're doing things like integrating next-generation generative AI into our ad system to make it even more performance-oriented. The overall of being by a wide margin the most performant connected TV platform, a lot of our ad work is going into that. Our traditional ad business is brand advertisers, agencies. That's a big and important business for us. Looking at small and medium-sized businesses that traditionally advertise on social media or more digital-first type advertisers, those are big markets, and we're building products to address those markets as well. I think I covered it, but I don't know, Charlie, if you have anything.

Speaker 2

You nailed it. I'll say, Justin, Charlie. Really, you asked what comes next. I'll tell you what comes before it is equally important too. If you think about it, Anthony mentioned we're in half the broadband households in the U.S. Authentication leads everything. I mean, literally all else follows. If you start to think about the fact that Roku has high fidelity signals, we have an ability to drive results for marketers in authenticated premium content. That's where it starts. Everything Anthony talked about is exactly right. We are going to continue to refine our integrations with each of these partners. I think the best thing is we will drive outcomes for our marketers and be able to actually continue to refine to meet their needs. Dan, I don't know.

Speaker 0

No, I don't have anything to add except to say that the question was around sustainable revenue on ad product, and I think Charlie and Anthony answered that. We also have a subscription business, which is driving a lot of revenue growth and is, in fact, growing faster. Premium subscriptions is doing exceptionally well. We had a tier-one launch last quarter. We'll have more tier-one launches in the coming months that we feel very good about. We have a whole other business in subscriptions that is also growing exceptionally fast, and we fully expect that to continue in addition to the ad revenue that Charlie and Anthony just discussed.

Speaker 1

Great. Thank you.

Speaker 4

Our next question comes from Laura Martin with Needham.

Hey there. My one for Anthony is on data. I understand that all these new revenue streams you're working on use Roku's best-in-class data. Do you have any updated feeling about licensing your best-in-class data to the LLMs, which are spending at Meta $72 billion this year and Gemini $85 billion this year, and they're running out of data, these LLMs? You guys have, I think, a revenue stream that is really valuable that you're not utilizing at all. For Charlie or Dan, there is auction density that you're working on, there is subscription revenue you're working on, and you didn't mention shoppable. Is that sort of the order you see in terms of driving upside from these, let's call them ancillary or newer revenue streams over the one to two years?

First would be getting the sell-out rate higher, second would be the subscription, and then third would be shopping.

Speaker 1

Hey, Laura. Thanks for the questions. Great to hear from you. On data, I'll just say that, yeah, that's right. I mean, our first-party data is an extremely important asset. We use it in a lot of ways. We use it. It's what powers our ad targeted advertising. It powers our AI behind all our performance marketing. It's how we personalize our home screen, make recommendations to users. The primary way we use it is we use it to sell more ads, sell more subscriptions, deliver a better experience for our viewers. We are always looking for ways to get better monetization out of our data. I mean, working with LLMs is certainly something that we've thought of and are considering, but it's not something that we're doing today. It's certainly something that we're investigating, I'll say.

There are other ways, I mean, there are other opportunities to monetize our data as well that we're also looking at. Charlie, Dan, do you want to take the second?

Speaker 2

Sure. Hey, Laura. It's Charlie. In terms of the order, I think they're all important. I'll address your shoppable question. We're bullish on shoppable, and it's one of those opportunities that I think is early but working. From some original programming where we've integrated product and made the products in the show shoppable to the far larger opportunity, which is to teach America how to shop on TV, I think Roku will be the best place to do that simply because of our scale. In terms of behavior, I think it is slightly early days. We do see, obviously, great performance metrics across our platform and certainly with some of our ads, including our shoppable ads. It wasn't mentioned because it's early days, not because we don't have great interest in pursuing it. We have lots of partners who are working with us on that.

Thanks very much. Great numbers, guys.

Thank you.

Speaker 4

Our next question comes from Michael Nathanson with MoffettNathanson.

Speaker 2

Thanks. Hey, I have two, Charlie and Dan. Hey, Charlie, as more and more sports content moves to streaming, it feels like you guys have a major opportunity here with sports experiences. Can you talk a bit about what you're seeing to date as a driving revenue growth? Longer term, do you envision a time when I can actually watch all my sports in one experience zone, right? Instead of going to different apps, can I just have one centralized aggregation place to watch my sports? That's for you. For Dan, I just want to confirm, you said distribution revenues are growing faster than advertising, and you had one new launch. I think we had both Fox and ESPN launch in the quarter. Is there a timing issue? Those are two major launches. Just want to confirm that. Thanks.

Hey, Michael. It's Charlie. Yeah, good to hear from you. Look, the fact that every NFL game is now available in streaming is nothing but a tailwind for Roku, which, again, represents half the broadband households in the country. We have tremendous opportunities with sports for a number of reasons. Number one, if you think about it, we talk a lot about being the lead into television. When the last Olympics came, we took great pride in being the fact that we were the front door to everything you wanted to experience. We helped drive that with NBC as our partners. We'll do the same for the World Cup that's coming and other opportunities. Frankly, Anthony talked about simplicity of the home screen, the simplicity and delight of us getting people to what they want to watch, especially their favorite sporting experiences through our destinations like the Roku Sports Zone.

I think we're really just scratching the surface of what that can be. As a sports fan myself, you see in Major League Baseball how your team travels from site to site and, excuse me, from app to app throughout the very same week. Of course, the sports experiences we create make that really simple. As a long-term vision of having a time where you can watch them all in one place, I think that is a vision every sports fan would like. You know the realities of these rights fees and how they are ending up behind paywalls. I will say, regardless of how it settles out, the best experience for watching sports will be on Roku, and we're really refining the way to help sports fans operate in a confusing landscape. Dan, do you want to take the back half?

Speaker 0

Thanks, Charlie. The short answer to your question is no, it's not a timing issue with revenue associated with Fox and ESPN. You back out any partner launch, you back out M&E, we're still growing incredibly fast, faster than the market. It's not a timing issue.

Speaker 2

Faster than advertising.

Speaker 0

Yes.

Speaker 2

Okay. Thanks.

Speaker 1

Yeah. This is Anthony. I'll just add, on the sports thing, Charlie answered it, but just to be super clear, it's a big opportunity for us. The fact that sports is and will continue to be fragmented across a lot of apps is a big opportunity for us. With products like our Roku Sports Zone to create a simplified experience that allows viewers to find the sports they want to watch, it's an area that we're focused on. It's also an opportunity for marketing and promotions and advertising and sponsorships as well.

Speaker 2

Absolutely. Thanks, guys.

Speaker 4

Our next question comes from Vasily Karasiyev with Cannonball Research.

Thank you. Good afternoon. Dan, I have a question for you. Now that we have had a few quarters in a row of very steady growth in platform revenue, and you just outlined, you and Anthony and Charlie outlined the growth drivers for the years ahead. Can you help us think in terms of ARPU growth, given where your user base is growing and the platform revenue growth? If I were to think sort of in the ballpark terms, would ARPU grow at double the rate of the platform revenue growth in the midterm? Just if you could help us dimensionalize that trajectory, it would be really great.

Speaker 0

Thanks for the question, Vasily. It's a good question. I would say several years ago, I know we had an ARPU when we actually had that KOM is roughly flat. We talked a lot of mix. I will say that in the U.S. and globally, platform revenue continues to grow. We've talked about the overall platform revenue growth is 17%. The guide is at 15%. We are growing our streaming households as well. We've grown them well internationally. We've grown them in the U.S. They continue to grow in the U.S. Overall, our ARPU is growing. I expect that to continue. I think I mentioned in a prior call at some point, I truly believe our ARPU can get significantly higher with all of our monetization initiatives. While we will grow streaming households, I strongly believe we'll hit 100 million streaming households in 2026.

Our ARPU is going to grow faster because our platform revenue initiatives are simply going to grow faster. It is a good story on both U.S. and international ARPU.

I'm sorry, you said faster. Faster than the active accounts growth or than the platform revenue growth?

It's going to depend on the country. I would say that.

Speaker 1

Let's say the U.S.

Speaker 0

The U.S. is, we're growing both the numerator and the denominator of that equation. Because of the platform revenue growth, both are constant, as we said, we're going to continue to grow double digits. Again, 17% growth in Q3 is very steady. I do believe ARPU will grow. I think the more important point is, I think our ARPU can go up significantly higher from where it is per account, per streaming household today. Again, we're going to continue to grow streaming households, but ARPU is going to grow fast.

Very helpful. Thank you.

Speaker 4

Our next question comes from James Samford with Jefferies.

Great. Thank you, guys, for taking the question. I know it's been under pressure for a while now, but is there anything you can say about M&E vertical this quarter and in Q4? Separately, how do you think about the consolidation in the media industry and how that potentially could influence your position as a distribution partner for streamers? I had a follow-up.

Speaker 1

Hey, James. This is Anthony. I'll take the second question on consolidation first and then turn it over to Charlie to discuss M&E. I guess I would just say that, as we've said many times, in the U.S., more than half of broadband households use a Roku to watch television. That means half of all TV streaming happens on our platform. That, of course, means that we're an essential partner to every content owner and streaming service. Whatever consolidation happens in the industry, that's not going to change. We're going to remain an essential partner. The streaming sector is robust. It's growing. It continues to grow nicely. I think that that's just creating a lot of opportunities for us to continue to grow our business. Oh, and then on M&E, Charlie?

Speaker 2

Sure. Yeah. I think that's right. It is easy to see, obviously, that the M&E industry is still figuring itself out as a whole. I'd say M&E companies are still focused on profitability, and as such, there remain some general challenges in CTV. Our advertising business is doing remarkably well despite some of those headwinds. We got some benefit from the new launches this quarter, but the industry remains pressured. Inside M&E, for us, there is quite a bit of good news. The theatrical side of M&E as a category is really starting to perform, and we're seeing those advertisers invest in the benefits of some of our unique units, like our custom home screen takeovers and the video in our marquee unit, which has been very popular.

I'll say, James, we have been focused on both diversifying and growing our platform business, and today, we're less reliant on any one vertical than we've ever been, including M&E. Because we're so big, we're in half the U.S. broadband households. We do remain the best place to spend on M&E to attract and engage and retain subscribers and to measure ROI. While we're not relying on M&E to drive our growth, improvement in the industry at any time will represent upside for us. If the segment really rebounds, it'll be a tailwind for us because we're really good at building the M&E business, and I believe we're the best place for an M&E advertiser to invest their dollars.

Speaker 4

Great. Thanks. Maybe just a quick follow-up on just overall macro environment in the quarter and so far in Q4. Anything stand out that's been particularly strong or weak? Anything on the call out there, maybe for Dan?

Speaker 0

I think maybe Charlie wants to take the top of the macro environment as it relates to ads. I can talk a little bit after Charlie. Charlie, you want to take the floor?

Speaker 2

Sure. Thanks, Dan. James, I like what we're seeing trend-wise. I really do. Roku has some unique attributes that allow us to take advantage of today's ad trends. I think that's equally important. One of them is you got to remember that as a platform, Roku, and I said it earlier, is a lead-in to all of television. That comes with some real advantages in this market. Also, we've been diversifying demand across our platform and our streaming service. We've built programmatic excellence and numerous third-party relationships that allow us to meet our clients, as I say, wherever they wish to transact. Roku's seen the benefit of the market as a platform and as a publisher. If you think about it, when I say publisher, I mean an owner, an operator of The Roku Channel, which you look at the Nielsen gauge, we're a top five streaming service.

On our own platform, we're number two in terms of engagement in the U.S. As a platform, the value of our home screen engagement has allowed us to benefit from our ad product evolution, among other things. An example of this is, like I said, our marquee ad unit, which is now very popular, and it's now a video unit. That's been great. In terms of diversifying demand and the programmatic excellence I just mentioned, we're seeing positive impact of both heading into fourth quarter and moving forward. Actually, Dan mentioned our platform revenue grew 17% year on year. That's due in part to strong performance in video advertising. Of course, that means we're growing faster than the U.S. OTT and digital ad marketplaces. If you look at that ex-political and ex-Frndly TV, third-quarter platform revenue grew 19% year on year. To answer your question, James, the trends are positive.

Roku is really uniquely positioned as both a platform and a leading streaming service to compound the value of these market trends. Dan, did you want to?

Speaker 0

The only thing I would add, I think, on upfront pricing, Charlie, I think I'll just say that the one trend going into Q4 is we were pretty happy with our upfront in terms of pricing. Maybe you want to touch base on that as a trend because I think that is a change.

Speaker 2

Yeah. You're right. With October comes the new upfront schedule starting to run. Not only do we have a really powerful upfront, but we saw pricing stability. If you want me to go deeper on pricing, it's really interesting how pricing affects different services in different ways. The headline I suppose I'd leave with, Dan, is that we have multiple levers to pull. That's consistent with what I just said. On pricing, we don't have a supply issue. We can price up and down a demand curve and use that to our advantage. We're doing really well, both in volume, and I think our pricing approach really is distinct in this market.

Speaker 0

Yeah. Exactly. Pricing's positive for us in Q4, at least as part of our upfronts, which was different than last upfront. That's a good positive trend for us. In terms of other trends, our guidance that we provided, which was roughly 15% per platform, and again, backing out political and Frndly TV, it's above the Q3 growth rate of 19%. It actually implies 20% growth on our next political ex-Frndly TV basis. That would imply that a lot of the trends that we're seeing in Q3, we expect to continue. It is advertising, for sure, on everything Charlie just said, but it's also our subscriptions business, which is performing incredibly strong, including our premium subscription business, which is growing very well.

Speaker 4

Thank you. Very thorough.

Thanks, James. Our next question comes from Ross Walthall with Cleveland Research Company.

Hey, guys. Thanks for the opportunity for the question. I just want to ask a little more detail on the Amazon DSP partnership. I know it's early days, but could you talk through what the rollout looks like from here, any customer feedback, and whether this could be a material driver going into either Q4 or 2026?

Speaker 1

Hey, Ross. This is Anthony. I'll start. I don't know if Charlie will have anything to add. I'll just say that, yeah, as you said, it's still early on the Amazon DSP. It's live now, but it's just basically gone live recently. I would say there's strong interest from customers. There's a lot of customers that are very interested in using the Amazon DSP. We're obviously a key partner for them in that. There's a lot of customers, obviously, that want to use The Trade Desk, but also these days, also Amazon. I'd say there's strong customer interest. The signs we're seeing so far are good, but it's just a little early to say. I don't know beyond that, Charlie, is there anything else?

Speaker 2

Yeah, I think you did. You mentioned The Trade Desk. You saw in The Trade Desk integration last year. It takes some time to roll out, but I like what we're seeing so far. We're seeing clients ask us the right questions about how to use it. We know there's a general push towards outcome-based buying and measurement of performance. Our strategy to be everywhere, including now Amazon DSP, has us in a good position. I do think it'll ramp well into 2026.

Speaker 1

Do you want to say anything on Q4 2026?

Speaker 0

I guess I would just say that I'm going to reiterate both Anthony and Charlie's point. We just turned it on the first of this month here. We're in very, very early days. We like what we see. It is contemplated in our Q4 guide. We're going to have a lot more visibility as we exit the year and go into 2026. We'll update you at that point in time.

That's great. One other question on the self-serve business. Do you think you have the right tech and partnerships in place to really scale this? Are all the pieces in place? Are there additional capabilities or partnerships that you need to add? I think just ultimately, where can this business go long-term?

Speaker 1

This is Anthony. I'll start and then see if Charlie has anything to add. The short answer is yes. We have everything we need. We've got the partnerships we need. It's also early in the evolution of this business. We're still investing in R&D. We're still building more partnerships. We have our own self-serve platform called Roku Ads Manager, but there are other businesses that are doing something similar. We're working with those companies as well. We're not wedded to just using our own platform to serve this market. It's a big market. It's a large market. It's a market that's multi-billion dollars. It's almost as large as the traditional brand advertising business. It's a big business. The other thing we're really focused on is integrating generative AI into our platform to do an even better job on targeting and performance-based marketing.

I think that there's nothing that we're missing, but there's a lot more evolution and growth that's to come. Charlie, I don't know.

Speaker 2

Yeah, that's right. We have everything we need, and we're going deeper. I mean, it's so funny. We talk about deepening these integrations. We continue to do the same with our own products and look for ways to refine and prove more and more performant. One thing that's unique about our product, obviously, is that these small and medium-sized businesses will now have access to authenticated premium content. When they see that they're able to, we said in the early days, democratize television and access our platform. I think we have a really compelling and differentiated offering. Of course, because we have the scale that we do, we're going to perform really well. What's great about these platforms, which is different than our traditional business, is that when we prove ROI, people will leave it on as long as there's a positive return. I like these advertisers.

I like how many new advertisers are coming to the platform, and I think there's a lot of opportunity ahead that we're poised for.

Speaker 1

Yeah. I'll just add, I think it's kind of probably self-evident, but this is a large business that exists in what's called the growth of social media platforms in terms of their advertising business. What's unlocked for platforms like Roku is basically generative AI that allows a business to create a video ad for free, basically, with a single click of a button, producing a very high-quality, high-production-value, professional-looking video ad. That now makes a video platform like Roku as easy to use as a social media platform for performance marketing.

Thanks, guys. Thanks, Ross.

Speaker 4

Our next question comes from Robert Kulbrith with Evercore ISI.

Speaker 0

Great. Thank you very much. Two questions, please. First, on performance, wanted to ask maybe about some of the advantages that you may have to sort of deliver on that as a platform player, your ability to sort of provide feedback loops or certain types of consumer interactions with ads on your platform. Also wanted to ask, sort of related to that as well, your ability or your interest level in perhaps launching new pricing models like cost per action or something along those lines. Second, just wanted to quickly touch on the streaming hours. Looked like you had a bit of acceleration there. Wanted to just ask if there were any comp factors or anything else to be aware of on that. Thank you.

Speaker 1

Okay. Just on performance, let me start and maybe Dan will have something to say. I think the advantages of our platform include extremely large scale, a lot of first-party data, and a very advanced technology platform, including a lot of AI. These are the things. These are the key. Then a user experience that has a lot of places to promote and place ads as well as video ads. These are the things that are sort of the base capabilities that we build our performance on top of. I think we're unique in our scale and the amount of data that we have. We have a world-class, I would say, probably the best TV engineering team in the world. We have all the pieces, and we're putting them together. In terms of our interest in new pricing models, I don't know, Charlie, did you want to take that one?

Speaker 2

The answer is you were asking about CPA, I think. That performance is in the eye of the beholder, right? You have some large packaging company who just want to see incremental reach, and then you've got some other businesses who have a very specific KPI. We can help them reach all of them. It's interesting. When I step back, I think about the use cases we can meet, and there are many. Ultimately, they all sort of fit into one of three buckets, which is planning or activation or measurement. We've got tools, and we have Roku Data Cloud and all sorts of other ways to help people maximize the efficacy of their media across the largest streaming platform in America. The answer to your question is directionally, absolutely.

We will meet people not just where they want to transact, but we'll start to prove ROI in deeper and deeper ways. Our platform, in terms of the Roku Ads Manager platform, will really make it easy for them to do so and continue to see a return on their investment. In terms of streaming hours, do you?

Speaker 0

I'll take that one. On streaming hours, it was a slight de-sell from prior quarters, but really, there's nothing there from a monetization standpoint. What you're just seeing is these numbers are just getting very large. We still are growing well into the double digits in streaming hours. I think it's also really important to note that The Roku Channel streaming hours and monetizable hours, which is something I look at across the platform, is actually growing very well. We're actually gaining traction, not in terms of acceleration of % hours, but The Roku Channel continues to be the number two app on our platform by streaming hours. It's actually gaining ground from other apps in that perspective. Nothing on streaming hours is concerning in any way. It's just very, very large numbers, hundreds of billions of hours that are being streamed here.

The de-sell from quarter on quarter is nothing that is of any concern. In fact, like I said, monetizable hours, especially with our premium subscription growth and our The Roku Channel growth, continues to do very well and is very strong.

Speaker 2

Yeah, as the Head of Ad Monetization, it is a non-issue. This is Charlie. I think it's actually what we need to come to market, and we're maximizing that inventory opportunity.

Speaker 0

Got it. Thank you very much.

Speaker 4

Our next question comes from Alan Gould with Loop Capital.

Speaker 0

Thanks for taking the question. I've got two, please. First, on the Amazon, just one quick follow-up. What are the key features and functionality that Amazon provides that the other DSPs don't? In addition to diversification, is the key issue there the frequency capping? For Dan, when I look at 3Q and 4Q platform growth, and you back out Frndly TV and political, if you were to also back out ASC 606, would the numbers be north of 20%? Would 4Q still be growing quicker than 3Q? Thank you.

Speaker 1

Hey, Alan. Charlie will take your first question, and Dan will take your second.

Speaker 2

Great. Thanks, Alan, for the question. Look, the easiest way to talk about it probably is that we're powering audience addressability, frequency management, and closed-loop measurement. As I say, we tend not to advise a client on which DSP to use. We are everywhere they want to be. We're very proud of this Amazon deal. At the highest level, that's what we're working on with that DSP integration. Dan Yoon.

Speaker 1

Sorry.

Speaker 0

To your question, sorry, I'll take the second part of your question. You're right. It would be slightly north of 20%. Actually, it's slightly north of 20% just ex-political and Frndly TV. For Q4, it would be closer to 21% on an ex-ASC 606 basis. Yes, you would still see that slight step up on an ASC 606 basis. That's ASC 606, just to be clear, that's ASC 606 from 2024. We have not booked any ASC 606 in 2025, nor do I expect to. Thanks, Dan.

Speaker 4

That concludes today's question and answer session. I'd like to turn the call back to Anthony Wood for closing remarks.

Speaker 1

I want to say thank you to our employees, customers, advertisers, and content partners. Thank you for listening.

Speaker 4

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.