Tubi and The Roku Channel drew an estimated $2.3 billion in NAM streaming advertising in 2025, according to Dataxis, the third-largest streaming ad business in the region and the largest built entirely on free TV. On June 15, Fox agreed to buy Roku for $22 billion, bringing both services under one owner. In its press release, Fox pitched the deal on audience reach and on owning the software behind 100 million households. But within the streaming ecosystem, is Fox buying content, or building the biggest free-streaming ad business in America? The two services are near-twins. Dataxis estimated The Roku Channel at $1.17 billion in NAM ad revenue last year (excluding other Ad revenues by Roku coming from display and its platform), and Tubi at $1.18 billion, for $2.34 billion combined, up 15% vs 2024. That sits behind only Amazon Prime Video ($5.1 billion) and Hulu ($2.9 billion), both subscription services with an ad tier. Among pure free streamers, nothing else is close. Both monetize free viewing, Tubi roughly 90% on-demand and The Roku Channel about 80% FAST, and Fox says only a third of their audiences overlap. The audience is still climbing. The Roku Channel reached 6.3% of all US TV streaming in December 2025, up from 4.6% a year earlier (shared by Roku, Nielsen Gauge basis). As the chart shows, the combined bar clears every other free streamer by a wide margin. It is more than $700 million above Pluto TV, the next FAST service, and over twice Samsung TV Plus. The deal also assembles a full advertising stack. Roku brings first-party viewing data and self-serve buying through Roku Ads Manager, aimed at small advertisers. Fox adds premium live sports and news inventory. Together they can sell linear, connected TV and free streaming as one targeted audience. Another key asset is the home screen that decides which apps and ads reach 100 million households first. Fox became the first legacy media owner of a major US TV operating system, a strategic asset in app discovery. The question is whether Fox keeps Roku app aggregator “neutral” within its own ecosystem or favors its own apps. If it does not, rival streaming apps and their viewers could leave for different aggregators like Amazon.
