There was a time when “building brand awareness” meant hiring a moody celebrity, shooting in black-and-white, and praying consumers felt moved enough to buy something they didn’t need. That time is dead.

The new prophets of advertising aren’t sipping lattes in corner offices — they’re hunched over Google Sheets like monks, whispering p-values and confidence intervals like holy verses. They are the performance marketers — spreadsheet sorcerers who believe salvation lies in regression analysis and who treat attribution models like sacred texts.

And lately, they’ve decided that CTV is their next algorithmic conquest.

Roku, unlike most of its competitors still pretending TV is a holy cathedral of “brand storytelling,” saw this invasion coming. While everyone else was polishing their “premium video” pitch decks, Roku quietly built a self-serve temple for the spreadsheet faithful.

Peter Hamilton, Roku’s Head of Ad Innovation, told Next in Media’s Mike Shields that it wasn’t until Roku Ads Manager launched that advertisers could finally run campaigns with no minimums, test creative, kill the losers, and start again — the same way they’ve been running Facebook ads since 2012. Or, as I like to call it, “test, kill, repeat — but make it television.”

This wasn’t a brand revolution; it was a behavioral shift. Roku understood that today’s advertisers don’t want to “buy TV.” They want to hack it. They want to feed data in, watch results out, and see how many times they can make the machine blink green.

Hamilton didn’t mince words about who’s actually moving into CTV. This isn’t about “mom-and-pop” advertisers testing 15-second spots between Wheel of Fortune reruns. It’s about digital performance buyers, the kind who run geo holdouts and lift studies for sport.

These people aren’t romanticizing reach. They’re dissecting return. And for the first time, Roku has given them a platform where DR (direct response) can live comfortably inside the world once reserved for big-brand storytelling.

The playbook is classic Roku — deceptively simple, quietly radical:

What Roku did here wasn’t inventing a new ad product — it was reverse-engineering impatience.

Because let’s face it — social and search are tapped out. Every DTC brand that once lived off Meta’s targeting algorithm is now staring at the bottom of the funnel like it’s a dry martini glass. Hamilton said it plainly: the same advertisers who “sucked up all the DR audiences on search and social” are now realizing they actually need to build consideration and demand again.

Or, put more bluntly: performance marketers got bored of being efficient.

So Roku handed them a ladder out of their own efficiency trap — CTV as the new middle of the funnel, but built to perform like the bottom. Hamilton called it out with the precision of someone who’s seen the matrix: “The consideration part of the funnel is becoming the new DR.”

That’s not a tagline; that’s a eulogy for old marketing orthodoxy.

Roku’s entire strategy is to shorten the loop — idea → impression → signal → spend-shift — until CTV behaves like search, but looks like television. It’s not the prettiest evolution of advertising, but it’s the real one.

And if you’re still measuring “awareness” while someone else is pressing OK to buy vitamins, well… you might need a taller ladder.

Pressing “OK” on a remote might feel harmless, but under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), it’s still a form of written consent — and that means rules.

To stay compliant, three conditions must be met:

Roku provides the mechanism, but the legal risk sits squarely with advertisers. Misusing a number or failing to log consent can trigger TCPA penalties of $500–$1,500 per text.

In short: pressing “OK” is legal only if everything else is flawless.

Roku’s new partnership with Amazon Ads isn’t just another handshake in the endless parade of “strategic collaborations” we see announced and forgotten within a week. This one matters — deeply — because it quietly redraws the map of connected TV. With Amazon’s DSP gaining access to Roku’s supply and identity ecosystem, we’re now looking at the largest authenticated streaming footprint in America, spanning over 80 million households.

But don’t confuse this for a merger of equals. This is an asymmetric marriage, one where Roku holds the keys to the mansion, and Amazon’s allowed inside — just not upstairs.

Roku’s not trying to be a “buy-anywhere DSP.” They’re doubling down on being the operating system of the living room, the one that controls the prime shelf space — the first thing you see when you turn on your TV. Their OS and identity graph stay locked down tighter than a Vegas VIP list. Amazon DSP can target Roku users deterministically, but it doesn’t get access to raw device data or behavioral telemetry. Roku keeps its crown jewels, but happily pockets the incremental demand.

As one Roku exec put it, this is “open like a hotel lobby — everyone’s invited, but security sees every angle.” Translation: come shop, but don’t peek at the books.

Amazon, for its part, gets exactly what it wanted — retail intelligence meets reach. Their DSP now plugs directly into Roku’s massive authenticated audience, letting advertisers link streaming exposure to actual Amazon conversions. That’s not just sexy for CMOs; it’s catnip for performance marketers who’ve been chasing deterministic attribution across screens since the dawn of “omnichannel.”

It’s a full-funnel fantasy — watch an ad on Roku, buy it on Amazon, prove it in the same dashboard. Agencies love it because it lives in one tech stack. Their measurement, attribution, and optimization all stay inside the Amazon machine. Roku loves it because it pulls in incremental spend without the messy politics of becoming a DSP itself.

The partnership uses a custom identity resolution layer — the diplomatic equivalent of a one-way mirror. Amazon can see Roku users clearly enough to target them, but Roku can’t see back into Amazon’s shopping carts. It’s the asymmetric handshake in its purest form: Amazon gets richer targeting; Roku gets more money; nobody gets to peek under the other’s hood.

That’s how interoperability looks in 2025 — guardrails wrapped in velvet rope. Everyone pretends it’s “open,” but the doors only swing one direction.

Here’s why this is shrewd as hell. Roku’s play is monetization without dilution. They keep control of their OS and identity graph while siphoning demand from the largest retail ad machine on the planet. It’s platform diplomacy — not a surrender, but a calculated alignment of incentives.

For agencies, it’s Christmas morning: de-duplicated reach, 27–30% fewer repeated ads, tighter frequency caps, and the ability to measure Roku and Fire TV together. For Roku, it’s a revenue boost and proof that it can stay “open” without turning into another walled garden.

But it’s not without tension. The technical friction has already started to hum — mismatched reach forecasts, latency hiccups, and the occasional identity-sync lag. Early testers complained to AdMonsters that Amazon’s DSP reporting doesn’t always show granular frequency data for Roku inventory. Translation: it works, but it’s messy.

And strategically, let’s be honest — Roku just climbed into bed with the same giant trying to own every living room in America. Analysts have already dubbed this “the deal with the devil moment.” The Trade Desk won’t be sending a fruit basket.

There’s another wrinkle: Amazon isn’t exactly leading with Roku. Internally, their ad sales teams are still incentivized to push Prime Video and Fire TV first — all owned-and-operated inventory with better margins and tighter measurement control. Roku’s inventory sits a little lower on the food chain, quietly categorized under “partner supply.”

Buyers have even noticed that in Amazon DSP’s interface, Roku appears under “third-party CTV,” buried below the shiny in-house options. It’s the DSP equivalent of being invited to dinner but seated at the kids’ table.

So yes, Roku’s in the Amazon ecosystem — just not on the same footing. Amazon gets to claim “80% authenticated household reach,” Roku gets a revenue lift, and agencies get another PowerPoint slide proving they’re innovating. Everyone wins, just not equally.

Here’s the real brilliance of it all: Roku isn’t tearing down its walls; it’s making the entrance more exclusive.

It’s not a “walled garden opening” — it’s a velvet rope. Amazon gets to come in, flex its retail data, and spend big. Roku gets the demand and keeps control. Everyone else gets to admire the collaboration from the sidewalk.

That’s how Roku wins — not by being open, but by being strategically accessible. In an industry obsessed with “interoperability,” they’ve built something better: controlled intimacy.

It’s not quite love. It’s not quite war. It’s co-opetition with benefits.

And as every Vegas veteran knows — those are the most dangerous relationships of all.

While everyone else is still talking about “the future of CTV,” ADOTAT is covering Roku’s Shoppable OS—where pressing OK on a remote is the new Add to Cart.

Peter Hamilton isn’t building an ad platform; he’s turning your living room into a transaction engine. We broke down how Roku’s Ads Manager now connects directly to Shopify Checkout, feeds real-time purchase data into its Conversions API, and rewires the entire funnel—from “watch” to “buy”—in one motion.

If you’re still measuring CPMs, you’re missing the real story: Roku isn’t serving ads—it’s serving commerce.

👉 Catch it now on ADOTAT: The Shoppable OS: How Roku’s “OK-to-Text” Became the Default Add-to-Cart.