2020 pairRokuVery beneficial. As consumers have been hiding from home and turning to the leading smart TV operating system, the company's year-over-year growth rate of active accounts (arguably Roku's most important indicator) has accelerated throughout the year.

Additionally, TV viewers brought good luck to the industry, abandoning traditional TV methods in exchange for streaming TV (and subsequent changes in TV marketing budgets), fueling Roku's strong momentum.

But for the company, this is still early days. In fact, we have every reason to believe 2021 could be a particularly good year for the company's business.

Let me explain: Here are Roku's top three catalysts for 2021 and beyond. For more Roku analysis, can the high-growth streaming stock Roku still rise again?

1. Accelerated advertising spending

Of course, Roku's active account growth accelerated in 2020. However, the company's average revenue per user (ARPU) growth is slowing.

In 2019, the company's ARPU was $23.14, up 29% year over year. However, as the pandemic raged and the operations of many businesses were damaged, ad spending declined, which had a negative impact on Roku's ARPU metrics. By the third quarter of 2020, the company's ARPU growth rate had dropped to 20% in the past 12 months.

There has been a notable slowdown in ad spend, but in every quarter of the pandemic, the number of profitable video ad impressions on the Roku platform has more than doubled compared to the same period last year. However, in the second quarter of 2020, this growth rate was only 50%. Across all digital advertising agencies, the reduction in ad spend is evident.

As businesses adapt to these new and ever-changing conditions, advertising budgets have increased again. In the third quarter, the number of profitable video ad impressions on the Roku platform increased 90% year over year. As marketers increase their budgets, Roku can benefit.

2.Roku Channel

Roku's often-overlooked catalyst is the company Roku Channel, an app that combines third-party content and streaming services into a user-friendly format. The app has won the favor of streaming services, advertisers, and TV viewers.

The Roku Channel can be used on Android, iOS, and Fire TV. The Roku Channel enables Roku to establish extensive partnerships with marketers and streaming services outside of the Roku platform. The Roku Channel currently reaches 54 million people, far more than the 46 million active accounts on the Roku platform. More importantly, Roku says streaming time on the Roku Channel is growing faster year over year than any other app on its platform.

Although Roku has enjoyed the economic benefits of Roku Channel, the company believes its content partners can also benefit from it.

Management said in a third quarter shareholder letter: “As we continue to provide users with more content and functionality on the Roku Channel, we believe that viewers will get more content from it, which will become a more important source of finance for our content partners.”

3. New streaming services

No need to choose which streaming service would be the most successful for Roku shareholders. Investors will benefit from the economic benefits of every streaming service on the company's platform.

This is particularly exciting when all content owners are doubling down on streaming services. For example,ComcastA new service called Peacock was launched in April of last year, while ATT's WarnerMedia launched HBOMax in May of last year. Both of these services now work on Roku.

In 2021, these media giants are likely to continue developing their streaming plans, which usually involve Roku to some extent.

Although it is impossible to know how Roku's stock price will perform in the short term, in the long run, these three catalysts paint an optimistic outlook for this growth stock in the long term.