Money and data are behind Peacock's standstill with Roku

Vulture

"While the situation with Peacock isn’t identical to what’s going on with HBO Max (and HBO Original Recipe, which won’t be streamable at all on Roku as of next month), the basic issue boils down to two things: money (shocker!) and data," explains Josef Adalian. "Like Apple, Roku long ago decided it didn’t want to just make money selling hardware. It now makes much of its cash selling advertising, either by giving over space on its homepage to streamers looking to sell their apps and shows, or more recently, through its own Roku Channel, which competes with services like Peacock by aggregating library content from studios and networks and offering them for free to users...Amazon and its Fire TV platform are also in the ad business, mostly through the IMDb TV free streaming service (which is very similar to the Roku Channel). And both companies have been going further than simply selling ads: They also want to control how audiences get their streaming programming. That may sound very consumer-friendly, except that it means streamers cede control of how users experience and discover content from their platforms and, more importantly, it means losing access to precious subscriber data, such as how subscribers binge a show."