Roku has confirmed plans to follow Amazon's lead and add video ads to the home screen. Unfortunately, ads are a staple of streaming in 2024, but Roku has so far stuck to static ads that appear on both the home screen and in the app.

All that will soon change as CEO Anthony Wood confirmed during the earnings call that video ads will soon be part of the home screen experience on the best Roku devices and smart TVs running the company's platform.

The full extent of the change is not yet known, but when asked about ad revenue and home screens, CEO Wood said that what used to be still-image ads will soon be the company's first video ads.

The full answer shared by Cord Cutters News is as follows:

"To give you some examples of the kind of things we are seeing on the home screen today, we have the best video app called Marquee, which has traditionally been a static ad. We plan to add video to that ad. In other words, this will be the first video ad we add to the home screen. That will be a big change for us."

He added: "We are also testing other types of video ad units, looking for other experiences we can add to the home screen, which would be where we can innovate more video ads. So that's what we are looking at."

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Importantly, no details or dates were added for this rollout. Therefore, it is not certain when Roku intends to make this change and whether it is a global shift or targeted only at specific markets. However, given the current weakening of the advertising market, it is not surprising that Roku is looking at ways to improve its bottom line.

It is not immediately clear what part of the home screen is the "marquee" block Wood is referring to, but at least it looks better than Amazon's approach of loading full-screen ads as soon as the service is turned on.

Given that Roku is one of the major leading TV software providers and has a robust hardware network, such as the Roku Plus series 4K QLED TV, this move was perhaps inevitable.