Home furniture brand Blu Dot blew up on CTV with help from Roku Ads Manager. Here’s how:

After a test campaign reached 211,000 households and achieved 1,010% ROAS, the brand went all in to promote its annual sales event. It removed age and income constraints to expand reach and shifted budget to custom audiences and retargeting, where intent was strongest.

The results speak for themselves. As Blu Dot increased their investment by 10x, ROAS jumped to 2,308% and more page-view conversions surpassed 50,000.

“For CTV campaigns, Roku has been a top performer,” said Claire Folkestad, Paid Media Strategist, Blu Dot. “Comping to our other platforms, we have seen really strong ROAS… and highly efficient CPMs, lower than any other CTV partner we've worked with.”

Using Roku Ads Manager, the campaign moved from a pilot to a permanent performance engine for the brand.

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Today's dispatches from the frontier of science span tens of thousands of years and billions of light-years - from a Neanderthal's fatal chest wound to a telescope that's outshining its own design specs. Plus: the heart signal no one knew existed, the physics discovery that rewrote a textbook, and an Alzheimer's clue hiding in plain sight.

A 75,000-year-old Neanderthal skeleton has revealed what scientists describe as a spear wound aimed directly at the heart - one of the most dramatic pieces of forensic evidence ever recovered from the ancient human record. The discovery adds a haunting dimension to our understanding of Neanderthal life and death, suggesting deliberate, targeted violence among our closest evolutionary relatives.

The wound's location and angle, according to researchers, point to an intentional strike rather than an accidental injury - raising profound questions about conflict, social dynamics, and perhaps even warfare among Neanderthal communities long before modern humans dominated the planet.

This finding deepens the picture of Neanderthals as complex beings capable of both cooperation and lethal conflict - reshaping the story of who we are and where we come from.

NASA's Roman Space Telescope is already exceeding the expectations of the scientists who built it. Early results show the telescope is performing with greater sharpness and precision than its design specifications called for - a rare and exciting outcome in a field where instruments typically meet, but rarely surpass, their benchmarks.

This level of optical performance means Roman could deliver even more detailed images of distant galaxies, dark energy signatures, and exoplanets than astronomers had planned for. The telescope, designed to survey enormous swaths of the sky with remarkable clarity, now appears poised to unlock discoveries that weren't even on the drawing board.

When a billion-dollar telescope beats its own specs straight out of the gate, the scientific community takes notice. Roman may well become one of the most transformative observatories in history - and it's just getting started.

A stunning new discovery has upended four decades of established superconductor science. Researchers have uncovered findings that challenge the foundational assumptions physicists have relied on since the 1980s - a jolt to one of the most intensively studied fields in all of modern physics.

Superconductivity - the phenomenon where certain materials conduct electricity with zero resistance - has long been a holy grail of energy science. The ability to transmit power without loss could revolutionize everything from electrical grids to medical imaging to quantum computing. This discovery suggests that our models of how and why superconductivity works may need significant revision.

Overturning 40 years of consensus is a seismic event in physics. The path to room-temperature superconductors - and all the technology that would unlock - may now look very different than scientists imagined.

Scientists have identified a previously unknown electrical signal in the heart - one that could serve as an early warning system for sudden cardiac death. The discovery points to a hidden layer of the heart's electrical activity that has gone undetected despite decades of cardiology research.

Sudden cardiac death remains one of medicine's most unpredictable and devastating events, often striking without warning even in people who appeared healthy. A reliable predictive signal - one that could be detected in routine monitoring - would represent a major leap forward in preventive cardiology and could save countless lives.

If this signal can be reliably detected with existing or new diagnostic tools, it could fundamentally change how cardiologists screen at-risk patients - turning a tragic surprise into a preventable outcome.

Researchers have identified what may be an early warning sign of Alzheimer's disease appearing in adults as young as 45 - potentially opening a window for intervention that scientists have long been searching for. The finding challenges the assumption that Alzheimer's is primarily a concern of later life and underscores the value of monitoring brain health far earlier than current practice suggests.

Early detection has always been the critical missing piece in Alzheimer's research. Most treatments that have shown any promise work best before significant neurological damage has occurred - making a reliable early marker one of the field's most sought-after goals.

If this warning sign proves robust in larger studies, it could reshape Alzheimer's screening entirely - giving doctors and patients decades of runway to intervene before symptoms ever appear.

After 30 years, researchers have cracked a long-standing biological mystery - and the answer may reshape how medicine approaches inflammation. Inflammation is at the root of a vast range of diseases, from arthritis and heart disease to diabetes and cancer, making any new insight into its mechanisms potentially far-reaching in its medical implications.

The discovery resolves a puzzle that has resisted explanation for three decades despite intense scientific scrutiny. Understanding the precise biological mechanism involved could point the way toward entirely new classes of anti-inflammatory treatments - ones that work more selectively and with fewer side effects than current options.

Inflammation underpins some of the most common and deadly conditions in modern medicine. Solving a 30-year mystery in this space isn't just academically satisfying - it's a potential launchpad for the next generation of treatments.

Paleontologists have uncovered a bizarre Jurassic-era creature described as a "squid" unlike anything previously known to science. The find adds a genuinely strange entry to the already-remarkable fossil record of ancient marine life - a reminder that the oceans of deep prehistory were populated by forms of life we're only beginning to comprehend.

What makes this discovery particularly striking is how different this creature appears to be from anything in the known fossil or living record. Unusual body plans from the Jurassic era help scientists understand the breadth of evolutionary experimentation that shaped modern marine ecosystems.

From wounds carved into bone 75,000 years ago to electrical whispers hidden inside the beating heart, today's science reminds us that the universe - and the human body - still holds more secrets than answers. Every discovery is a door. The remarkable thing is how many doors are opening at once.