A：The speaker observed positive trends in the platform business this quarter and is optimistic about the outlook for the upcoming quarter. The growth drivers mentioned are making better use of the home screen, growing ad demand, and growing subscription revenue.

A：The key strategies for growing platform revenue in 2024 include making better use of the home screen, which is a key strategic asset, growing ad demand, and growing subscription revenue.

A：The home screen is a strategic asset for Roku as it is the starting point for many customers' viewing experience, where they discover and decide what to watch. Improvements to the home screen, including recent updates like the addition of a recommendation row and a larger update in testing, are ongoing and aim to enhance the viewer experience and improve monetization.

A：Recent developments include a relationship with Amazon and its DSP turning on, integration with Apps Flyer for ad measurement, and focus on improving the performance of the ad platform with more resources behind Ads Manager, which is aimed at small and medium-sized businesses and performance marketers.

A：Premium subscriptions are performing well, and the company continues to improve the premium subscription experience and add new services. Plans include launching more tier one subscription services and premium subscriptions in 2026. The new service, Howdy, is a subscription video on demand (Svod) service aimed at an underserved market and is in its early stages but seen as a large opportunity for growth.

A：The company has a strong financial position with 2.3 billion in cash and short-term investments on the balance sheet. It achieved positive operating income in Q3 for the first time since fiscal 2021 and has a positive outlook for Q4 with an Adjusted EBITDA of 145 million, which is the highest ever. The company expects full-year EBITDA margins to improve by 200 basis points year over year to approximately 8.4% and anticipates a similar improvement in the following year. The company is CapEx light, generating faster free cash flow than EBITDA, with a trailing Ed month free cash flow of over $440 million. The company is focused on offsetting share dilution through net share settlement programs and has reduced total dilution for Q3 to under 30 basis points.

A：The company has made progress with third-party demand sources and the ad manager by integrating with various ad tech partners, including Amazon, to drive greater efficiency and performance. The company has had integrations with dozens of ad tech partners and is excited about the partnerships as they align with its strategy to be open and interoperable. The company is particularly bullish on its position as an open and interoperable partner in a market with many walled gardens.

A：The company is optimistic about the impact of automation and performance marketing on its ad manager. The macro shift towards performance marketing to CTV is seen as a tailwind, and the company is making progress with innovation to prove that Roku is the most performance-driven CTV platform. There is a market push towards automation and sophisticated proof of performance, which is beneficial for the ad manager. The company has seen new advertisers coming in due to the performance of their campaigns on Roku.

A：In Q3, the company experienced a strong growth rate slightly over script, and the guided growth rate is inclusive of political and friendly factors. When excluding political and friendly factors, Q3 growth is actually a bit higher. For Q4, the company expects a slight step up in growth from the 19% reported in the third quarter. The company is confident in its performance for the remainder of the year. Looking forward to 2026, guidance will be provided after the next quarter. The company has many initiatives in the works, including the home screen and the entire UI, ads manager, new ad products, and premium subscriptions in the overall subscription business, which are all expected to contribute to future growth.

A：Future add product innovations include the new home screen and various ad manager integrations. The company is excited about these developments and believes they will contribute to sustaining platform revenue growth. Specific details on additional add products were not provided, but the company is confident in its strategy and the impact of ongoing initiatives on future performance.

A：The new home screen, which has a fresh look and feel and is simpler to use, is expected to enhance engagement and monetization. While the current home screen is loved by customers and considered useful, the goal is to make it even more useful, thereby improving engagement and monetization. The new design is intended to maintain and improve the iconic and differentiated qualities of the home screen while adding more delight and functionality.

A：The goals for the business regarding the home screen are to increase customer satisfaction and to drive more monetization. This includes helping viewers to sign up for more subscriptions, watch more ad-supported content, and promoting more monetization.

A：The company's strategy with DSPs is not to stop integrating as they are working on deepening their integrations with major DSPs to increase business and create stronger business relationships.

A：The company is focusing on performance and is building products for big markets like traditional brand advertisers and agencies, as well as small and medium-sized businesses that traditionally advertise on social media and more digital advertisers.

A：According to the speaker, authentication is crucial as it enables driving results for marketers in the context of premium content and underpins the value proposition for advertisers and marketers.

A：The subscription business is contributing to revenue growth by growing faster than the ad revenue. The company has had successful tiered launches and anticipates more to come, with the subscription business continuing to grow rapidly.

A：Roku's potential for data monetization includes utilizing their first-party data to sell more ads and subscriptions, improve viewer experience, and exploring opportunities such as working with data management platforms (DMPs) and investigating other ways to monetize data. However, they have not yet entered into agreements with these platforms and are still considering their options.

A：Yes, the company envisions a future where sports content can be watched in one centralized aggregation place, rather than having to navigate to different apps for various sports content.

A：Yes, the company confirms that distribution revenue is growing faster than advertising revenue.

A：There are tremendous opportunities with sports content due to the fragmentation of sports across various apps. The platform aims to simplify this experience through products like the Sports Zone to help viewers find the sports they want to watch, enhancing the user experience.

A：The long-term vision is for a time when sports fans can access all their favorite sports experiences in one place, which is a desire shared by all sports fans. The platform is working on simplifying operations and ensuring the best experience for watching sports, even as rights fees and paywalls are a consideration.

A：The platform is growing incredibly fast, faster than the market, and is not directly tied to advertising, indicating robust underlying growth independent of advertising fluctuations.

A：ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) is expected to grow, and it is anticipated to grow double the rate of platform revenue growth in the mid-term. This growth is attributed to ongoing platform revenue growth and the addition of more streaming households. The ARPU in the US and internationally is projected to increase significantly due to continued platform revenue growth and monetization initiatives.

A：The company remains an essential partner for content owners and streaming services, regardless of industry consolidation, as more than half of streaming TV occurs on their platform. The streaming sector is robust and continues to grow, providing opportunities for the company to grow its business.

A：The company believes that improvement in the M and E industry will represent upside for them as they are focused on building the business and believe they are the best dollar for M and E advertisers to invest their dollars. A recovery in the M and E sector would be a tailwind for the company.

A：The company is seeing positive trends in the macro environment related to advertising. Specific highlights for the quarter and Q4 were not detailed, but the overall sentiment suggests that the company's business is performing well without detailing any particular standout strengths or weaknesses.

A：Roku's unique attributes include its role in leading into all of television, diversifying demand across its platform and streaming service, building programmatic excellence, and maintaining third-party relationships to meet clients' transacting needs. As a platform and publisher, Roku has seen benefits from market trends through its home screen engagement.

A：Roku is positioned uniquely as both the platform and a leading streaming service, which allows it to compound the value of market trends. Positive indicators include year-over-year growth in platform revenue, particularly in video advertising, and the performance of its Mar a unit and programmatic excellence.

A：Positive trends for Roku in Q4 include strong upfront pricing stability, the ability to adjust prices up or down the demand curve, volume growth, and a distinct pricing approach. The company's outlook suggests that the growth rate is expected to continue, with a guided growth rate of about 15% for the platform, and implying 20% growth on an ex-political and friendly basis.

A：There is strong interest from customers in the Amazon DSP partnership, with many customers expressing interest in using it along with Trade Desks. Although it's still early to have definitive feedback, the signs are positive, and the partnership is seen as a potential material driver for growth in Q4 and beyond.

A：The Trade Desk integration is working out positively for Roku, with clients asking the right questions about how to use it and a general push towards outcome-based buying and measurement of performance. The company believes its strategy is well-positioned to grow into 2026.

A：Roku is confident in its technological capabilities and partnerships for scaling its self-serve business. It has the necessary partnerships and is still investing in R&D and building more partnerships. The company is also focusing on integrating generative AI into its platforms to enhance targeting and performance-based marketing. It believes it has everything in place and sees potential for further evolution and growth.

A：The unique feature of the product for small and medium-sized businesses is that they now have access to authenticated premium content, which was previously only accessible to larger businesses. This democratizes television and allows these businesses to leverage a platform that scales well and provides a positive return on investment.

A：The new advertising capability with generative AI is described as allowing businesses to create a high-quality, professional-looking video ad with just a single click of a button, essentially for free. This feature makes video platforms like Roku easy to use as a social media platform for performance marketing.

A：The advantages of the platform for feedback loops and consumer interactions with ads include extremely large scale, a lot of first-party data, very advanced technology platform including AI, a user experience that supports ad placement and video ads, and the expertise of a world-class TV engineering team. These elements are foundational to the platform's ability to deliver effective performance marketing.

A：The company is interested in launching new pricing models such as cost per action (CPA), which would align with specific business KPIs beyond just incremental reach.

A：The deceleration in streaming hours is not attributed to any specific concerning factors. The company is experiencing large growth, with numbers still increasing well into the double digits for streaming hours.

A：The company is powering audience addressability, frequency management, and closed-loop measurement by integrating with the Amazon DSP, although they do not advise clients on which DSP to use and are present in all major DSP ecosystems. The focus is on enabling these specific advertising features for their clients.

A：If certain factors, presumably political and friendly, and excluding a specific item labeled '606' were removed from the platform's growth numbers, the growth would be slightly north of 20% for Q4, and even closer to 21% when considering the '606' basis.