Roku’s Sarah Harms on building the future of CTV advertising

Connected TV is no longer just a buzzword in the ad world — it’s where the industry is being reinvented. Audiences aren’t just watching differently; they’re shopping, engaging, and co-viewing in ways that open new creative doors for brands. And sitting at the intersection of entertainment and advertising is Roku, a company that’s helping marketers meet these shifts head-on.

In this episode of The Big Impression, Roku’s VP of advertising, marketing & measurement, Sarah Harms, explains why the company is uniquely positioned as a publisher and an operating system.

“We see consumers come through our front door to get to the content they know and love. That gives us a really rich canvas for supporting our marketers’ initiatives,” she says. Whether it’s driving traffic to a Super Bowl ad integration or helping a CPG brand like Hellmann’s create a shoppable moment inside Roku City, the platform is testing the limits of what TV can do.

Measurement is also evolving quickly. “What’s great about CTV is it’s big, beautiful television, but with all the addressability and accountability of digital,” Harms says. That dual identity — the reach of TV with the precision of digital — is attracting a wide spectrum of advertisers, from Fortune 500 brands to direct-to-consumer startups.

And the behavior shift is already here. “I don’t think anyone thought they’d be shopping with their television. That happens every day on our platform,” Harms notes. From interactive showrooms for car brands to challenger sports leagues finding loyal fans, the connected TV experience is proving it can drive not just impressions, but real outcomes.