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Every time adtech gets boring, someone steps up and throws a Molotov cocktail into the conversation. This week it was Peter Hamilton at Roku, suggesting that insertion orders — the ancient paperwork glue holding brand advertising together — are on their way to hospice care.

The subtext? If you’re still pushing IOs, you’re not planning for growth — you’re planning your own obsolescence.

When I pressed him on LinkedIn — so, no one buys from Roku directly anymore? — Hamilton clarified: “Not at all. I am talking about IOs as a primary buying path for any CTV buying. It will probably never go away, but it will be reserved for more niche, big brand moments.”

Translation: IOs aren’t dead; they’re just being shoved into the wedding china cabinet.

You’ll dust them off for the Super Bowl, the Oscars, maybe a tentpole launch — but the rest goes through the pipes.

And here’s the thing: Hamilton’s been consistent.

His career arc — from HasOffers to TUNE to Roku — is one long sermon on the benefits of automation, performance marketing and hitting the Cost-Per-Action. He’s not spitballing; he genuinely believes automation should bulldoze the messy, relationship-driven IO model.

For decades, IOs have been the boring but essential scaffolding of brand marketing. They’re slow, they’re manual, they require contracts and pacing calls — but they also deliver:

As Mauricio Lizarazú pointed out in the thread, publishers aren’t walking away from IOs because programmatic eats into their margins. Advertisers, meanwhile, often discover they can grab the exact same CTV inventory through IOs for half the eCPM.

Others echoed it:

So yes, IOs are changing shape. But calling them “niche” undersells how stubbornly useful they remain.

Proclaiming the end of IOs makes for good headlines and investor slide decks, but reality is messier. IOs aren’t disappearing — they’re mutating. From contracts to auto-generated docs, from the main course to the champagne toast.

And that’s the rub. Automation is inevitable, yes. But relationships, brand control, and premium integrations aren’t going quietly into the night.

So Hamilton might be right in spirit — the bulk of spend will flow through pipes — but premature eulogies for IOs only make sense if you ignore how money, margins, and brand risk really work in CTV.

Because if he’s wrong? Roku just told its biggest customers to stop buying direct. And that’s less “visionary disruption” than shooting yourself in the foot while calling it innovation.

👉 Coming up for paid subscribers: Why the IO obituary doesn’t hold water (Part II) and what Roku actually gains by pushing this narrative (Part III). Spoiler: it’s not just about efficiency — it’s about control.