MarTech360 Interview with Anna Miller, Head of Ad Measurement, Roku

“For marketers, the lesson is that creative effectiveness isn’t just about what you’re showing people. It’s also about where and how they’re experiencing it.”

Anna, your recent Roku and Publicis Media Exchange research looks at what happens when social-first creative moves onto CTV. What initially made you curious about whether content designed for the feed could work differently on the biggest screen in the home?

Streaming and social are the channels where consumers spend most of their time, yet advertisers rarely think through a unified buying approach across both screens. As marketers invest in made-for-social creative and creator partnerships, we wanted to understand if brands could maximize that investment and repurpose their creator ads to the biggest screen in the home.

By testing the same creative across social and CTV, we measured whether the screen environment changes how consumers perceive an ad. We discovered that made-for-social content on CTV more than translates- it takes on new strengths, opening opportunities for advertisers to efficiently get more value from creative they’re already investing in.

The study found that social placements were more likely to be seen as engaging, but the same creative on CTV showed stronger signals around relevance and purchase intent. What does that tell us about the role the viewing environment plays in how people experience an ad?

One of the most interesting findings was that the exact same creative could generate very different sentiment depending on where someone encountered it. Social is incredibly effective at capturing attention, but our research found that bringing that content to CTV changes how consumers perceive both the ad and the brand behind it.

For example, when an energy drink brand ran its made-for-social creative on the Roku Home Screen, perceptions that the product was “for someone like me” increased by 17 percentage points compared to social, while purchase intent increased by 11 points. That’s significant because it demonstrates that the environment surrounding an ad can influence more than engagement. It can actually strengthen how personally relevant a brand feels to consumers and how likely they are to consider purchasing it.

For marketers, the lesson is that creative effectiveness isn’t just about what you’re showing people. It’s also about where and how they’re experiencing it.

The research also found that social creative carried more of an “annoyance” factor in the social environment, while CTV changed that dynamic. How should marketers think about the relationship between creative, context, and the viewer’s mindset when deciding where content belongs?

Capturing someone’s attention and creating a positive impression aren’t the same. Social is built around a fast-moving, highly interactive experience, where creative needs to compete with an endless stream of content. Conversely, streaming offers a lean-back environment where viewers are settling in to enjoy entertainment on the biggest screen in the home.

Our research showed that, while made-for-social creative was more engaging in the feed, viewers were more than three times as likely to describe it as annoying on social compared to CTV. That distinction matters because marketers shouldn’t just be asking whether an ad gets noticed. They should also consider how that exposure makes consumers feel about the brand.

The opportunity isn’t to choose one screen over another, but to understand the different roles they play. Social can be incredibly effective at sparking engagement, while CTV offers an opportunity to build positive brand associations and strengthen consideration.

One of the more interesting findings is that social-first creative did not simply lose its strengths when brought to CTV. From a measurement perspective, what does this tell you about evaluating creative across channels rather than assuming the same asset should perform the same way everywhere?

It challenges the idea that creative performance can be evaluated through a single metric, regardless of where an ad runs. An asset that performs exceptionally well on social might be considered successful because it drives click through engagement, but that doesn’t necessarily capture its full value when it’s brought to another environment.

Our research showed that made-for-social creative could deliver stronger perceptions of relevance, quality, and purchase intent on CTV, even when the creative itself remained unchanged. That means advertisers can repurpose the same creative but change the platform to achieve new outcomes.

From a measurement standpoint, advertisers need to think critically about which platform should be graded by which metric. Have a creator ad on social driving low recall? Don’t assume you need to change the ad. Maybe you just need to change the environment.

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Creator content is increasingly moving beyond social feeds and onto streaming platforms, while Roku has predicted a deeper collision between TV and the creator economy. What do you think creators and brands need to understand about translating social influence into a CTV environment?

Creators have built incredibly engaged audiences on social, and we’re now seeing that success extend into streaming as creators connect with their followers in new ways. The opportunity isn’t to choose one environment over the other. It’s in connecting the two.

Our research found that when consumers encountered the same creator across both social and CTV, perceptions of brand authenticity increased 60% over seeing the ad on social alone. Importantly, that improvement came without increasing the number of ad exposures.

For brands, this suggests that the opportunity isn’t simply to repurpose creator content for TV. It’s to develop coordinated campaigns that leverage the credibility creators have established on social while using the streaming environment to strengthen and extend how consumers perceive the brand. At Roku, we’re seeing this convergence firsthand with the launch of our new Creators Zone, which brings creator-driven entertainment together in one destination on CTV, making it easier for audiences to discover and engage with their favorite creators on the biggest screen in the home. As the creator economy and streaming continue to converge, we’ll see more opportunities to bring these worlds together in ways that help creators reach new audiences and give advertisers new ways to connect with consumers.

The study points toward a more fluid relationship between social and CTV, where the two environments can potentially reinforce each other rather than compete for attention. How do you see that changing the way marketers should think about their media mix?

The biggest shift is moving away from evaluating channels exclusively in isolation and toward understanding how they contribute to each other’s effectiveness. Social and CTV have different strengths, but our research demonstrates adding CTV can generate stronger outcomes than social alone.

We’ve seen this relationship extend beyond creative effectiveness as well. In separate research with Amazon Ads, we found that on days when Roku CTV was running, (non-CTV) digital channels generated 87% higher return on ad spend compared to comparable days without CTV. Similarly, an analysis of more than 30 Roku and Instacart campaigns found that consumers exposed to both Roku CTV ads and Instacart Sponsored Product Ads saw a 1.4x higher conversion rate compared to those exposed to Instacart Sponsored Product Ads alone.

Together these findings reinforce that marketers should think about CTV as a channel that can strengthen the performance of their broader media investment; CTV makes every other channel work harder.

As more brands repurpose social and creator content for CTV, what do you think the industry needs to get better at measuring? Is traditional engagement enough, or do relevance, purchase intent, and downstream business outcomes tell a more useful story?

One of the most compelling findings from our research was that personal relevance, specifically whether consumers felt a product was “made for someone like me,” was the strongest predictor of purchase intent. In fact, relevance contributed approximately three times as much to purchase intent as the next strongest brand attribute measured.

That tells us marketers should be looking beyond whether creative gets noticed to understand whether it’s creating a meaningful connection with consumers. Ultimately, we want to connect those brand-building signals to real business outcomes, whether that’s consideration, customer acquisition, or sales. The better we get at measuring that full journey, the better advertisers can understand the true value of their creative investments.

Your broader work at Roku focuses on turning measurement into actionable campaign outcomes. When the same creative can behave differently depending on where it appears, how should measurement evolve to account for the environment around the ad as well as the ad itself?

Traditionally, we’ve looked at factors like audience, creative, and frequency as levers for campaign performance. But our research reinforces the environment where an ad appears is another important variable that influences consumer response.

If the same creative generates stronger engagement on one screen, but greater relevance and purchase intent on another, those differences should inform how advertisers plan, measure, and optimize their campaigns.

At Roku, we’re focused on helping advertisers connect what happens on the TV screen to measurable outcomes across the broader consumer journey. That includes everything from brand lift and consideration to website visits, purchases, and incremental sales.

With AI changing the economics and volume of content creation, brands may soon have far more social and creator assets available to adapt for CTV. What will separate the content that genuinely earns attention on TV from the content that simply gets repurposed onto another screen?

AI is making it easier and faster for brands to produce creative, but having more content doesn’t mean more effective advertising. As the barriers to creative production come down, I think the differentiator will increasingly be how well brands understand their audiences and adapt content to make it relevant to them.

Our research showed that even creative originally developed for social could deliver stronger relevance, quality perceptions, and purchase intent when brought to the Roku home screen. That’s encouraging for advertisers because it suggests they don’t always need to start from scratch to create effective TV advertising. But they do need to understand how different viewing environments influence consumer response.

The brands that will stand out are those that use AI and creative tools to experiment more efficiently, while grounding their decisions in measurement. It’s about using the flexibility of new technology to test what resonates, understand why it works, and optimize for outcomes that matter to the business, rather than simply producing more content.

Anna, if you look beyond this study, what do you think marketers are still underestimating about the convergence of social, creators, and CTV, and where do you see the biggest opportunity for the industry over the next few years?

Marketers are still underestimating how much value they can unlock from creative and media investments they’re already making. As social, creators, and CTV become more interconnected, the opportunity isn’t simply to reach consumers across more screens. It’s to understand how those screens can work together to make advertising more effective.

Our research reinforces that the same content can deliver different benefits depending on where it appears, and that coordinated exposure across social and streaming can strengthen brand perceptions without necessarily increasing frequency. That’s a meaningful opportunity for advertisers looking to improve both efficiency and effectiveness.

Looking ahead, I think the biggest change will come from bringing creative strategy, media planning, and measurement closer together. We’re moving toward a world where marketers can make decisions based not just on where their audiences spend time, but on how each environment contributes to consumer behavior and ultimately drives business results. That’s where I see the greatest potential for CTV.