Roku Extends Distribution Agreement with Amazon and IMDb

Hardware digital media brand Roku has announced this week that it extended its distribution agreement with Prime Video and IMDb TV apps on all Roku devices.

Prime Video is a video on-demand over-the-top streaming and rental service of Amazon offered as a standalone service.

Terms of the deal are yet to be disclosed. However, the noticeable rise in Roku’s share price is still well under half the streaming platform’s 52-week high.

IMDb TV is a demand streaming service owned by Amazon. The service launched in January 2019 as IMDb Freedive.

Roku and Amazon’s renewal was reached without any public fireworks erupting — in contrast to some of Roku’s recent distribution deals.

Roku complained that Google was behaving in an anticompetitive manner. Among other things, Roku had objected to what it said were Google’s demands to give YouTube search results preference over other content sources via a dedicated row and to omit search results from non-YouTube sources if users were in the YouTube app on Roku.

Roku takes 30% of ad inventory on partner channels and keeps 20% of gross transaction revenue for paid applications.

Roku first launched IMDb TV in January 2021, while Prime Video has been on Roku devices in the United States for more than a decade. Amazon added the Roku Channel to Fire TV device family in October 2020.

Roku ended 2021 with 60.1 million active accounts, up 17% year over year but well below its 39% pandemic-fuelled gain of in the year-earlier period.

56 percent of people claimed watching more videos on streaming platforms on television.

The company has seen a revenue slowdown in its Platforms segment and rising costs in its hardware business in recent months.