The 42matters Explorer now supports the Roku Channel Store! Research the connected TV (CTV) market, generate CTV app publisher leads, enhance CTV ad targeting, and more!
We’re thrilled to announce that the 42matters Explorer officially supports the Roku Channel Store! Now, you can use our flagship app market research platform to explore all 36,000+ Roku apps, with insight into app publisher details, app metadata, performance metrics, integrated ad network SDKs, required permissions, and more!
Here’s what we cover in this article (click the links to jump to the relevant section):
- What is the Roku Channel Store?
- How to Access the Explorer’s Roku Dashboard
- What Roku Insights Can You Get From the Explorer?
What is the Roku Channel Store?
The Roku Channel Store is Roku TV’s digital storefront. It’s a connected TV (CTV) marketplace that offers a diverse range of content, including streaming channels, apps, games, podcasts, radio stations, and more. In essence, the Roku Channel Store is to Roku what the Apple App Store is to iOS.
At 42matters, we provide a number of CTV app intelligence solutions. For example, our file dumps for CTV apps deliver raw, easy to ingest data from platforms like Roku, Fire TV, Apple TV, Google TV, Samsung, LG, and Vizio.
However, with the Explorer’s new Roku dashboard, you’ll have easy access to actionable app intelligence directly from the Channel Store. The Explorer’s visual interface and sophisticated filtering capabilities make it perfect for technical and non-technical users alike.
Want to get started? Sign up for a 14-day free trial!
How to Access the Explorer’s Roku Dashboard
If you’re already familiar with our Explorer platform, then accessing the Roku dashboard is easy-peasy. All you have to do is open up the Explorer and select the Roku icon on the upper left-hand side of the screen — it’s right next to the Google Play and Apple App Store options.
However, for the uninitiated, here’s a brief overview of the platform…
The 42matters Explorer is a high-octane app market research tool that’s user friendly, visually intuitive, and flexible enough to accommodate a variety of use cases. It provides insight into 17+ million published and unpublished iOS, Android, and Roku apps available on the Apple App Store, Google Play, and the Roku Channel Store. You can use it to:
- Analyze app performance KPIs like downloads, monthly active users (MAU), ratings, and reviews.
- Research app publishers and track developer updates.
- Examine integrated SDKs and permissions.
- And more!
While the Explorer provides valuable use cases for companies operating in numerous industries, ad tech companies, ad networks, and SDK developers find it particularly useful. Indeed, the intelligence it provides can help them generate app publisher leads, improve digital ad targeting and performance, and conduct detailed competitive benchmarking.
However, until now, the Explorer was limited to the world of mobile apps. The addition of the Roku Channel Store means that an entirely new world of CTV app intelligence is now open for business. Companies that have already built tools for CTV apps can use it to supercharge their existing strategies, while those that have not can diversify their business by tapping into one of the fastest growing markets in the world.
Either way, they’ll have access to a set of CTV app intelligence tools that’s currently unmatched in the market. The Explorer provides them with Roku app insights like authorized ad sellers (app-ads.txt), app identifiers, categories, IAB categories, localization techniques, content ratings, parental advisories, app store optimization (ASO) keywords, and much, much more.
We’ll delve deeper into these insights in just a moment, but to wrap up this section, we’d like to direct you to the Explorer’s Roku dashboard. Here’s how to get started:
1.Sign up for a 14-day free trial by clicking here.
2. Once you’re set up with a trial account, open up the 42matters Launchpad. Here, you’ll find tiles to help you navigate to each of our products. They’re titled: API, Explorer, Watchlist, File Dumps, etc.
3. Click the Browse Apps button on the Explorer tile. This will navigate you to the Explorer platform, which opens to the Google Play dashboard by default.
4. To open up the Roku dashboard, click on the Roku icon on the upper left-hand side of the screen.
5. You can then browse a limited selection of Roku apps, open up their profiles by clicking on their names, play with the Explorer’s filters, and more.
If you’d like to set up an all-access Explorer account, reach out to our team directly!
What Roku Insights Can You Get From the Explorer?
Authorized Ad Sellers (app-ads.txt)
The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) designed the app-ads.txt standard to combat ad fraud by enabling mobile and CTV app publishers to declare which ad networks are authorized to sell their ad space. The standard helps ad networks ensure that their SDKs are whitelisted by app publishers and advertisers assure they’re working with legitimate ad networks.
The Explorer’s “app-ads.txt” filter allows users to access app-ads.txt files for all Roku apps that adhere to the standard. In other words, it can be used to verify which ad networks are authorized to sell ads on Roku apps.
App Developer Insights
The “Developer Name” filter allows users to search for apps in the Roku Channel Store based on the name of the developer. This feature is particularly useful for companies looking to partner with specific developers or analyze the performance of their apps.
For ad networks, it can be used to identify how many apps a developer has published. They can then use this information to see how well these apps perform, research their target markets, and determine which ad networks they use. If the developer is an existing customer, the ad network can make sure their solutions are whitelisted by each of their apps and spot if any apps use competitor ad networks.
App Identifiers
The Explorer can be used to review app IDs, channel IDs, and bundle IDs for any Roku app, making it easy to verify their legitimacy. This is especially useful for ad networks and advertisers that want to reduce ad fraud by avoiding copycat apps.
Publication Status
The Explorer also enables users to see whether an app is currently published or if it has been removed from app stores. This may be a sign that the app is fraudulent or that it’s no longer operative. Going back to our ad network example, these insights can be used to inform and adapt advertising and lead generation strategies.
App Categories and the IAB Content Taxonomy
The Explorer provides category and IAB category information for each Roku app. This means it can be used for things like app segmentation and ad targeting.
App categories are pretty self explanatory, they’re used to convey information about app content to customers and help digital shoppers find apps of interest. However, for ad networks, they serve an additional purpose. They enable precise ad targeting by providing actionable information about app audiences. For example, apps in the “Kids & Family” category may be a better fit for advertisers looking to target families than apps in the “Sports” category.
Taking things a bit further, the Explorer provides app categorization via the IAB Content Taxonomy. Intended to provide a universal approach to app categorization, the IAB Content Taxonomy is composed of categories and subcategories that provide a “common language” for describing app content across platforms.
Consider that mobile and connected TV (CTV) app stores like Google Play and the Roku Channel Store have slightly different app categories. Where Google has “Education,” “Food & Home,” and “Health & Fitness”; Roku has “Educational,” “Food & Drink,” and “Health & Wellness.” The differences are slight, but they complicate things like contextual targeting and brand safety. To address this, the IAB’s taxonomy offers standardized categories for all app stores.
In addition, app stores don’t typically have many categories. Google Play has 49, the Apple App Store has 26, and the Roku Channel Store has 109. The IAB Content Taxonomy, meanwhile, has hundreds. This means it’s far more granular than the standard app store taxonomies, enabling more advanced app segmentation.
Language and Country Availability
The Explorer also makes it easy for users to filter Roku apps by the languages they’re available in and the countries where they can be downloaded. Once again, this is especially valuable in the advertising space.
When it comes to ad placement on Roku apps, ad networks and advertisers must consider their target audiences. If an advertiser offers a product that’s available in Spain only, then ad networks should make sure their ads are being placed on apps that are also available in Spain. Likewise, if an advertiser puts together a campaign in French, the ad network should make sure that they’re placing ads on apps that are available in French.
Content Ratings and Parental Advisories
With the Explorer, users can filter Roku apps based on their suitability for certain audiences. Indeed, brand safety is important. The last thing advertisers want is for their reputation to be put in jeopardy by having their logo appear beside disagreeable content. One way to avoid this in the CTV space is to create whitelists and blacklists composed of approved and unapproved CTV apps based on content ratings and parental advisories.
Keywords
Finally, the Explorer enables users to search Roku apps by keyword. Going back once again to the advertising example, segmenting app inventories is crucial for high-return ad targeting. By focusing on specific keywords or phrases, ad networks can easily categorize apps into different segments based on their relevance to certain campaigns. For instance, they can leverage trending TV shows or celebrities to target specific audiences.
