Roku announced Monday the launch of Kids & Family, a new streaming destination within its ad-supported streaming platform The Roku Channel.
The new section of the streaming platform houses a library of kid-friendly content from more than 20 partners, including Hasbro Company, DHX Media, Happy Kids TV, Lionsgate and pocket.watch. The destination will offer over 7,000 on-demand titles and a selection of 24/7 linear channels.
“We recognize that it can be a challenge to find quality kids and family entertainment across multiple streaming channels, particularly free, ad-supported options,” Rob Holmes, vice president of programming and engagement at Roku, said. “Kids & Family not only provides a selection of great free, ad-supported content from partners like pocket.watch with ‘Ryan’s World’ and Lionsgate’s Leapfrog, but also highlights kids’ entertainment from existing Premium Subscriptions partners.”
The new Kids & Family section will have less advertising than the overall Roku Channel and approximately 40% of the advertising time of traditional linear television, according to Holmes. LEGO Systems has signed on as the first advertising sponsor of Kids & Family section.
“Roku offers a custom experience that will help us connect with our kid and family audiences, who are consuming content on an evolving array of platforms,” said Michael McNally, senior director at the LEGO Group. “We’re thrilled to be the exclusive sponsorship partner in Kids & Family on The Roku Channel.”
With the new section, Roku is also rolling out Parental Control features for The Roku Channel. The company is offering PIN-based playback controls to the service that will allow parents to set access limits to content based on ratings within The Roku Channel. If the setting is enabled, a PIN will be required in order to view videos on The Roku Channel based on the content rating.
Launched in 2017, The Roku Channel streams both live and on-demand content from partners like Lionsgate, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), Sony Pictures Entertainment and Warner Brothers. In addition, it also streams content from streaming services such as American Classics, Nosey, OVGuide, Popcornflix, Vidmark and YuYu.
The launch of the Kids & Family section follows a strong quarter for Roku, which saw its ad sales and subscriptions business increase 86% year-over-year, accounting for $167.7 billion in revenue. The company says that more than 30 million people now use its streaming device at least once a month, accounting for 9.4 billion hours streamed in Q2 of this year.