Roku partners with Shopify to allow purchases direct from TV

Streaming platform Roku has partnered with Shopify, giving shoppers the ability to make purchases from Shopify merchants through their TVs.

As a result of the new partnership, Roku watchers are served ads through Roku Action Ads. When they see the ad, the viewer can click OK on their Roku remote to receive more information and make the purchase from their TV screen.

The customer’s payment information populates at checkout from the Roku Pay payment platform, providing seamless purchases.

Action Ads. Roku Action Ads have already been adopted by Walmart and Doordash in the last year.

Action Ads can add any kind of action to a streaming ad that moves a customer down the funnel. For instance, an advertiser can include a QR code, send a customer a text or connect them with more information about their product or brand.

Expanded Shopify relationship. Previously, Roku’s relationship with Shopify enabled merchants to execute campaigns and measure attribution through Roku’s verified identity.

With more down-funnel actions through Action Ads, Shopify merchants (and other advertisers using the ads) will have access to more customer data, purchasing trends and insights.

Why we care. Adding one-click purchases to streaming experiences is becoming more mainstream with streaming services’ growing audiences. TV isn’t just for big-splash branding campaigns, or even just for targeted branding to smaller audiences — although the precision of CTV enables that, too. Increasingly, it can support all customer actions, including purchases. But the streaming environment has to be holistic.

Roku has expanded its adtech environment with strategic partners like Shopify. And they will continue to make the viewing and purchasing experience more seamless with Roku-branded smart TVs launched earlier this year.

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