Ad-supported streaming giant Roku signaled this week that it isn't stressing the uptick in competition, even as Disney, Netflix, and most recently Comcast and Charter plan to enter the streaming market with new ad strategies.

If recent announcements about ad plans by these companies have rattled the rest of the streaming world, Roku is wearing its poker face. During a media briefing ahead of Roku’s earnings call with investors on Thursday, Scott Rosenberg, senior VP and general manager of Roku’s platform business, characterized Netflix’s recently teased plans for an ad tier as “an exciting development.”

“Advertising lowers the barrier to entry for consumers, helps retain consumers who might be price sensitive. So the availability of yet more ad-supported services, we view to be a net good for the ecosystem,” Rosenberg said. He added that Roku has also “played a pretty important role in enabling—both through marketing distribution and ad tech—AVOD services to succeed and flourish in the Roku ecosystem.”

As for its own content and advertising strategy, Roku is squarely focused on expanding its offerings from The Roku Channel, plans for which the company said it will detail at its NewFront on May 3.

Roku reported a net loss of $26.3 million in its first-quarter earnings yesterday. Net revenue jumped 28% to $734 million from a year earlier, while platform revenue rose 39%, the latter of which the streamer attributed to greater content distribution and advertising revenue. In its letter to shareholders, Roku said active account reach and streaming engagement have been key drivers in “significantly” increasing its ad opportunities.

The Roku Channel, the company’s free and ad-supported streaming service, has been essential to the company’s growth. As the company noted to shareholders, The Roku Channel “enables us to continue to uplevel the quality and diversity of our content portfolio, reinforcing the flywheel in which more content grows engagement, more engagement drives ad revenue, and more ad revenue drives more content.” 

Among the ways Roku is drawing users to its own streaming service—even among a plethora of other ad-supported streaming options—is through licensing deals, including with A+E Networks and Lionsgate. A low barrier to entry and limited ad interruptions help prop up its successful streaming service as well, the company said. (Roku noted its streaming channel was a top 5 channel by reach and engagement in the U.S. on the Roku platform.)

“We have great movies every month. It's one of the things that we know brings new users in, we know brings existing users back to watch a few movies every month. It is a big part of the service overall,” Rob Holmes, VP of programming at Roku, told Ad Age in an interview earlier this week. “We have half the ad load of linear TV, so it's a much better ad experience than what consumers are used to from the TV ecosystem.”

Roku typically limits its ad load to two-minute pods, Holmes said, with a “reasonable” set of ad breaks broken up over the course of an hour. That shakes out to around eight minutes per hour in total. MoffettNathanson research from 2020 found linear commercial runtimes ranged anywhere from 11 to nearly 15 minutes per hour depending on the network. 

Successful as The Roku Channel has been in securing viewers and growing its platform—the company reported 61.3 million active accounts, up 1.1 million for the quarter—the competition pool is growing. The Roku Channel’s free TV competes for eyeballs against other ad-supported streaming services like Google’s YouTube, Paramount’s Pluto TV, and Amazon’s Freevee, to name just a handful. With cheaper ad-supported plans for paid premium services entering the market, the stakes are higher than ever.

Asked by Ad Age earlier this week whether Roku is exploring further licensing partnerships with major studios like the one it recently announced with Lionsgate, Holmes said Roku is continuously evaluating ways to grow The Roku Channel’s library in a way that benefits both consumers as well as advertisers.

“We work with with all the studios at this point and are always looking for opportunities to expand the portfolio in a way that works on an ad-supported basis,” Holmes said. “I think as we look at more and more premium content to bring to our viewers, this kind of stuff absolutely makes sense.”