Almost one-third of Roku viewers in U.S. watch in groups - study

By Jessica Toonkel (Reuters) - Television networks and advertisers got an early holiday gift from ratings agency Nielsen and video streaming provider Roku Inc after a joint study showed 27 percent of all viewing on a Roku device is made up of two or more people. For advertisers contending with increasing concerns about whether people are actually viewing their ads, the findings show that they can approach buying ads through devices that stream video like Roku, known as over the top (OTT) platforms, in a similar way that they approach buying television spots, said Scott Rosenberg, vice president of advertising at Roku. "We love being in the market talking about how premium OTT ads are because they are running on a 55-inch television and they are 100 percent viewable," Rosenberg said. "We also like to talk about the fact that it's a shared device because there are more people in the living room." This is especially true for children's shows and sporting events which saw a 38 percent and 28 percent respective boost in the number of people viewing their ads and content, according to the study. Nielsen and Roku will release the data on Thursday. Other genres, like comedy and drama, saw around a 25 percent uptick in viewers when factoring in co-viewing, according to the study. The study is based on a month of viewing data from 963 homes. The data is not surprising given that parents tend to watch television with their children and sports tend to be a communal watching activity, said David Wong, senior vice president of product leadership at Nielsen. Nielsen and Roku teamed up in April to measure video advertising delivered to Roku streaming players and through Roku TV. For Roku, the collaboration provides insight to media buyers on the age and demographics of the audience using Roku devices and Roku TV, Rosenberg said. "If you are a media buyer trying to buy males age 18 to 34, you now have an industry standard metric to buy off of when you are buying off the Roku platform," he said. (Reporting By Jessica Toonkel; Editing by Bernard Orr)