Your TV set has become a digital billboard. And it’s only getting worse | TV software is getting loaded with ads, changing what it means to own a TV set.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/08/tv-industrys-ads-tracking-obsession-is-turning-your-living-room-into-a-store/
21 Comments
From the article: The TV business isn’t just about selling TVs anymore. Companies are increasingly seeing viewers, not TV sets, as their most lucrative asset.
Over the past few years, TV makers have seen rising financial success from TV operating systems that can show viewers ads and analyze their responses. Rather than selling as many TVs as possible, brands like LG, Samsung, Roku, and Vizio are increasingly, if not primarily, seeking recurring revenue from already-sold TVs via ad sales and tracking.
How did we get here? And what implications does an ad- and data-obsessed industry have for the future of TVs and the people watching them?
Success in the TV industry used to mean selling as many TV sets as possible. But with smart TVs becoming mainstream and hardware margins falling, OEMs have sought new ways to make money. TV OS providers can access a more frequent revenue source at higher margins, which has led to a viewing experience loaded with ads. They can be served from the moment you pick up your remote, which may feature streaming service ads in the form of physical buttons.
Some TV brands already prioritize data collection and the ability to sell ads, and most are trying to boost their appeal to advertisers. Smart TV OSes have become the cash cow of the TV business, with providers generating revenue by licensing the software and through revenue sharing of in-app purchases and subscriptions.
A huge part of TV OS revenue comes from selling ads, including on the OS’s home screen and screensaver and through free, ad-supported streaming television channels. GroupM, the world’s largest media investment company, reported that smart TV ad revenue grew 20 percent from 2023 to 2024 and will grow another 20 percent to reach $46 billion next year. In September 2023, Patrick Horner, practice leader of consumer electronics at analyst Omdia, reported that “each new connected TV platform user generates around $5 per quarter in data and advertising revenue.”
This is why I pay the Sony tax, there’s minimal advertising and the OS is pretty slick
This is why a mini-PC /media-center on the AUX HDMI input is the go-to.
There is a solution: [Official Pi-hole Raspberry Pi 4 Kit | The Pi Hut](https://thepihut.com/products/official-pi-hole-raspberry-pi-4-kit) with [Pi-hole – Network-wide Ad Blocking](https://pi-hole.net/)
Well be living in the second black mirror episode soon enough
Just buy a big computer monitor without any TV functionalities and lots of hdmi/usb-c/display ports.
I don’t think i’ve connected my TV to the internet in about a decade. TV’s baked in apps were always just so much worse than Consoles, FireTV/ Apple TV, that for my last 2 TV’s (mid range hisense and Phillips) i just never bothered, and if it ever became mandatory it would be a sure fire way to kill the brand for me.
The constant advertisements is what made me fully switch to digital in like 2005, streaming has improved so much since then. TV has just been showing why it’s a dead medium in more expressive colours.
Anyone know what TVs can you buy now that don’t have this crap?
I just plug an actual computer into my TV. Smart TV computers are the slowest crappiest thing you can stream on. If you hate ads it’s probably best to just automate Usenet to download all your shows.
I have a Samsung TV.
I also have a rule on my home firewall to block “*.Samsung.*” going to or from my TVs IP address.
ezpz
HTPC or bust for me. I’ve been doing it this way since I got my first HDTV back in 2007. I’ve had brief times where I thought it would be a good idea to try another streaming device (when the Chromecasts were new, when the OG Shield TV was new, when I got my first smart TV, etc.) but they all always end up having some sort of issues playing something, whether audio or visual or subtitles or whatever.
A lot of people will be like “How do you control it?” Just look up a PC remote on amazon (the specific one I’m currently using is labeled “Gimibox” but there are tons of clones of it) and you’ll find ones that have common PC control buttons on them, with some mappable IR buttons (to turn your TV on/off, change input, etc) and usually a gyro for mouse control and a keyboard on the back.
Using one of these remotes, along with Microsoft Powertoys to remap some of the buttons on the remote to do what you actually need (alt-tab between apps, send alt+F4 to close, alt+enter to toggle fullscreen, cycle between or directly launch pinned taskbar items, etc). Also, you can just set your PC to boot straight into the app you use for viewing stuff (in my case, Plex). If you ever find yourself in a situation where your mapped buttons don’t work, just turn on the gyro cursor and/or use the rear mini keyboard.
No ads, no audio or video formats that can’t be played, no limitations on I/O ports (or, at least, you have lots of options to add them), no stuttering and long buffering because of a weak playback device, no issues with wrong resolution or overscan problems you can’t fix, can use Philips Hue’s backlight syncing without buying a sync box, and, probably the biggest plus for me over the years, Steam big picture mode 🙂
In surprising move, TV needs commercials to pay for TV shows.
Call me crazy, but when I watched He-man in the eighties I got ten adverts every ten minutes… I actually appreciate services that aren’t subscription based and instead are funded with adverts.
I wouldn’t own a TV with built in ads if it was literally free. You would have to pay me to have one of these in my home. I despise invasive advertising.
And Google just killed chromecast. Great, just great.
What if I told you tv shows exist to get you to watch the ads? That the show itself is secondary to those ads.
I just do what alot of others probably do. Ignore all of it and use my iptv and ps5
The tv series Madmen was prophetic.
“Television was created to put something beetwen an ad and another”.
I recently donated my old digital TV box from when those were being sent out free of charge back in 2009 for older non-digital TVs, and regretted it because I could slap that bad boy on an old CRT TV and never have to worry about Big Brother.
I bought a couple of new TVs recently but I will never connect them to the internet. I don’t trust them and the HDMI ports all work so why connect them? There is absolutely no benefit to a ‘smart’ ‘connected’ television. And I don’t believe it’s just because I’m old.