Why You Should Seriously Consider Roku Ads for Q4 (Even If You’re a Meta Diehard)
Hey friends,
Let me set the scene.
It’s Thanksgiving weekend. Your cousin is half-asleep from too much turkey, the dog is licking dessert plates off the table, and your aunt is watching a Hallmark movie while scrolling on her phone. Meanwhile, a Roku ad for a wellness brand pops up on the big screen. Ten seconds later? She’s clicking OK on the remote to buy a gift for herself and one for her sister.
This is the world we live in now. Connected TV is not a futuristic thing to look into later. It’s here. It’s scaling. And if you’re not at least testing Roku Ads during Q4, especially Black Friday and Cyber Monday, I think you’re missing a meaningful opportunity.
Look, I love Meta Ads. It’s still my home base. But we’ve been quietly layering Roku into our Q4 media plans, and I want to share why you should too. Not because I’m trying to push some shiny new thing, but because I want you to win this quarter.
Let’s Start With the Obvious: People Stream Like Crazy During Q4
We’re talking nearly 300M hours streamed during Black Friday weekend on Roku last year. That’s not a made-up number from a pitch deck. That’s real, verified, turkey-on-the-couch data. And the single biggest streaming day? The Sunday between Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Four years in a row.
People are cozied up. They're shopping. They're looking at their screens, and increasingly, that screen is a 65-inch 4K TV, not a phone.
So the question becomes: Are you showing up there?
What Changed That Should Make You Pay Attention
Let’s be honest. For years, CTV felt a little out of reach. You had to talk to a rep. You needed “TV creative.” You needed a media budget that looked like it belonged to a household name. Attribution was fuzzy. It was just not for most of us.
But now Roku has a self-serve Ads Manager. It's clean, simple, and kind of shockingly easy to use. Like "my 4-year-old could do this, but I won't let her because she only advertises for snacks" easy.
With any amount of ad spend and your existing creative assets, you can get a campaign up and running. No film crew required. No 90-day lead time. Just a quick creative export and a targeting plan.
And About That Creative
Here’s the part that surprised me most.
Roku doesn’t require you to reinvent your ad library. If you’ve already got Meta ads that are crushing it, particularly founder-led, UGC-style, or story-driven, you’re 90 percent of the way there. You can even use Roku’s built-in video upscaling tool to make your mobile content look great on the big screen.
We’re talking low lift, high impact. That’s my kind of combo.
Our team has been repurposing top-performing Meta ads, tweaking CTAs, and using Roku’s “Action Ads” format. Yes, people can buy directly through their remote. That’s real. It works.
We’re not doing a massive pivot. We’re just extending high-performers into a high-attention environment.
Why This Works With Meta, Not Instead of It
Let me be clear. I’m not telling you to pull dollars from Meta.
I’m telling you that Roku is a strategic extension of what’s already working.
You already know the power of retargeting. You know the value of frequency. And you know that during Q4, paid social can get expensive and competitive.
Roku lets you offset that a bit. You can reach the same people using your custom audiences from Shopify, pixel-based site visitors, or lookalikes, but in a completely different environment. One where they’re not swiping but sitting. Not skipping but watching. Not getting hit with 3-second TikToks but settling into a longer format where your brand story can breathe.
We’ve seen clients use Roku to warm up cold audiences before hitting them on Meta. Others use it as a final retargeting nudge right before a big drop. It’s flexible. And now it’s trackable thanks to Roku’s pixel and Shopify integration.
Real Talk: If You’re Going to Try It, Now’s the Time
Black Friday and Cyber Monday are no longer single-day events. They’re full-on seasons. And with Q4 being the highest ad cost and highest intent quarter of the year, the brands that expand reach without blowing up CAC are the ones that usually come out on top.
The average Roku viewer spends more time streaming than they do on social media. They’re actively seeking deals. They’re ready to buy. And they’re not looking at your static banner ad. They’re hearing your voice and seeing your product on the same device they use to binge Ted Lasso.
The question I keep coming back to is this. Why wouldn’t you want to be there?
Final Thought Before You Go Make More Ads
If you’re already running Meta and you’re happy with performance, amazing. But if you want to diversify your placements, extend your reach without spinning up a whole new creative machine, and lean into the most attention-rich screen in the house, Roku is worth your attention.