Roku Builds Generative AI Platform for Scalable Video Ad Creation

Roku's investment in generative AI for ad creation streamlines the pipeline for advertisers, making CTV advertising more accessible and efficient. This move broadens Roku's ad-tech capabilities, potentially attracting a wider range of advertisers, including small and medium-sized businesses, by simplifying video ad production. The effectiveness of this platform in scaling ad inventory and maintaining quality will be a key indicator to watch for its impact on Roku's ad revenue and the broader CTV advertising market.

Roku has been actively expanding its advertising ecosystem, with a focus on ease of use for advertisers. The company introduced Roku Ads Manager as a self-serve platform for CTV ads, emphasizing performance measurement and optimization (Roku Advertising, May 2024). This platform already includes an AI-powered video upscaling tool to enhance existing digital creative for CTV campaigns. Roku’s strategic push into generative AI for ad creation is driven by a goal to scale from approximately 200 major advertisers to 100,000 smaller businesses, as revealed by CFO and COO Dan Jedda at investor conferences (The Verge, September 2025). This initiative aims to address a significant supply of unsold ad inventory, as Roku's streaming hours have rapidly increased, with The Roku Channel alone seeing 80% year-over-year growth (The Tech Buzz, September 2025). Jedda noted that generative AI could enable businesses to create a "very well-produced commercial" in minutes, making TV advertising accessible to companies previously priced out. This strategy could lead to a redirection of digital marketing spend from search and social media platforms towards streaming, with significant implications for how local businesses engage with TV advertising (The Tech Buzz, September 2025).