Your TV set has become a digital billboard. And it’s only getting worse.

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?

The value of software

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.”

Automatic content recognition (ACR) tech is at the heart of the smart TV ads business. Most TV brands say users can opt out of ACR, but we’ve already seen Vizio take advantage of the feature without user permission. ACR is also sometimes turned on by default, and the off switch is often buried in a settings menu. Including ACR on a TV at all says a lot about a TV maker’s priorities. Most users have almost nothing to gain from ACR and face privacy concerns by sharing information—sometimes in real time—about what they do with their TVs.

At this point, consumers have come to expect ads and tracking on budget TVs from names like Vizio or Roku. But the biggest companies in TV are working on turning their sets into data-prolific billboards, too.

When TVs watch you back, so do corporations

In recent years, we’ve seen companies like LG and Samsung increase their TVs’ ad capabilities as advertisers become more eager to access tracking data from TVs.

LG, for example, started sharing data gathered from its TVs with Nielsen, giving the data and market measurement firm “the largest ACR data footprint in the industry,” according to an October announcement. The deal gives Nielsen streaming and linear TV data from LG TVs and provides firms buying ads on LG TVs with “‘Always On’ streaming measurement and big data from LG Ad Solutions” via Nielsen’s ONE Ads dashboard.

LG, which recently unveiled a goal of evolving its hardware business into an ad-pushing “media and entertainment platform company,” expects there to be 300 million webOS TVs in homes by 2026. That represents a huge data-collection and recurring-revenue opportunity. In September, LG said it would invest 1 trillion KRW (about $737.7 million) through 2028 into its “webOS business,” or the business behind its smart TV OS. The company said updates will include improving webOS’s UI, AI-based recommendations, and search capabilities.

Similarly, Samsung recently updated its ACR tech to track exposure to ads viewed on its TVs via streaming services instead of just from linear TV. Samsung is also trying to make its ACR data more valuable for ad targeting, including through a deal signed in December with analytics firm Experian.

Representatives for LG and Samsung declined to comment to Ars Technica about how much of their respective company’s business is ad sales. But the deals they’ve made with data-collection firms signal big interest in turning their products into lucrative smart TVs. In this case, “smart” isn’t about Internet connectivity but rather how well the TV understands its viewer.

The true price of a cheap TV

Budget TVs are the leaders in this trend, often offsetting cheap hardware prices with ads and data collection. Some people seek out the latest display developments, but many consumers merely want the cheapest TV they can buy within a certain size range. Various brands lure budget shoppers with low prices but then force them to pay through heightened ad exposure—either immediately or after a future software update. In recent months, we’ve seen budget brands test users’ limits when it comes to ads, and this is all happening amid a global shift to streaming services that are also increasingly ad-driven.

Roku OS is constantly trying to fit more ads with stronger targeting into its UI, whether that’s on the menu, on screensavers, or delivered via Roku TV channels. Earlier this year, Roku OS introduced home-screen video ads.

Roku has also tested a feature that “would force viewers to sit through effectively a mid-roll ad when clicking from the Roku City screensaver to return to home screen,” Digiday reported in May. Additionally, Roku filed a patent for showing ads over anything you plug into your TV. It’s possible that neither capability will roll out, but interest in these sorts of developments illustrates the value Roku puts in advancing its ad services.

Moving off an Android fork, Amazon reportedly started deploying its own OS to run on its TVs in November. Amazon Fire TV users are subject to full-screen video ads, and OS ownership gives Amazon more control and greater potential for earnings from advertising services. Amazon’s advertising business was thought to be its most profitable in 2020, and Fire OS is becoming a bigger part of that.

With software updates easily forcing new ad capabilities into already-owned TVs, it’s likely that this strategy will intensify in the near term as OS providers try to find more ways to support new types of ads. In the long term, with price often cited as a top factor in TV purchasing decisions, pricier brands may potentially cave and adopt more ad-centric tactics. Such moves could help those brands offer prices that are more competitive with budget options.

TV or store?

Even before smart TVs, watching TV typically meant watching plenty of commercials and product placements. But Internet connectivity, advanced tracking techniques, and interest in TV data collection from megastores are pushing TVs to evolve from digital billboards to digital stores.

People usually only buy a new TV every few years or longer, which has driven OEMs to the ongoing revenue potential tied to data and ads. For users, this means that TV watching could become much more commercialized as the industry seeks new ways to use TVs for ad tracking. The current focus is on developing “shoppable ads,” or ads that let people make purchases while using their TV.

A depiction of a shoppable ad for Walmart on a Roku TV.

Roku

A depiction of a shoppable ad for Walmart on a Roku TV. Roku

Checking out on the Roku TV.

Roku

Checking out on the Roku TV. Roku

A depiction of a shoppable ad for Walmart on a Roku TV. Roku

Checking out on the Roku TV. Roku

Streaming services like Hulu already show shoppable ads, and TV OS operators are exploring ways to capitalize on the trend. Amazon and Roku TVs, for example, have shoppable ads on screensavers. Other brands, like Samsung, are building out their ability to deliver shoppable ads on TVs. Relevant players are exploring formats like QR codes, games, and ads you can navigate with your remote. And TV brands are increasingly working with big stores like Walgreens and Best Buy to more extensively target advertising.

Omdia’s Horner tells me that shoppable ads are the “next wave of smart TV advertising.” Amazon and Walmart are expected to lead the way as huge retailers that can incorporate the purchase histories they have from their stores with viewer data. According to trade publication Retail TouchPoints, Walgreens Senior Director of Client Success Katie Vogt explained the appeal at a June conference:

The beauty of reaching a specific Walgreens shopper is that [brands can] tie back the measurement and understand whether the shoppable [connected TV] ad actually drove those customers to go into a store or go online to make a purchase.

Walmart’s proposed Vizio acquisition is an obvious example of how eager retailers and advertisers are to access data collected from TVs. Through its Platform+ business unit, Vizio was one of the first OEMs to focus more business on ad sales and tracking than hardware.

In Q1 2024, Vizio reported $88.3 million gross profit for Platform+ and a $7.2 million loss for its devices business.

Credit: Omdia

Walmart is willing to pay $2.3 billion for Vizio to help reach its dream of being a top-10 advertising business. Soon, using a Vizio TV could mean fueling Walmart’s ability to sell and track ads and make retail sales.

Stakeholders argue that shoppable ads provide a service to viewers, but the obvious winner is advertisers. As Tony Marlow, CMO of LG Ad Solutions, wrote earlier this year, without shoppable TV ads, “marketers have been unable to gain a truly holistic view of the entire purchase journey.”

Going even further, newcomer Displace is offering a peek at an aggressive TV-as-a-store future. The company says its sets, which will ship at the end of the year, will be able to use proprietary gesture tech to tell if someone is raising a hand. The TV will pause the content and use computer vision to look for stuff the viewer can buy. Viewers can place items they want in a shopping cart and pay for them using the TV’s integrated NFC reader.

As a 2-year-old startup offering a niche product, Displace likely won’t have the same impact on the industry as the likes of Amazon or Vizio. But Displace’s TVs are indicative of an industry desperate for new ways to make money and eager to be an integral part of e-commerce.

Telly’s free TVs

Another niche upcoming TV set is the Telly. The company’s TVs are free but allow the startup to track their owners, and they have a secondary screen for showing ads, including when the TV is off (the secondary screen can also display information like the weather or sports scores). Telly’s prospective owners must answer a long series of questions, like if they’re registered to vote and who their cell phone provider is, with the data used for ad targeting. Telly has discussed further potential ways to commercialize TV watching, such as letting people earn gift cards by filling out surveys (also to help targeted advertising) on the TV.

Telly’s 4K TV comes with a different kind of price.

Credit: Telly

Telly takes tracking to a new level, especially since owners can’t opt out—blocking tracking may result in an owner being charged for the TV. The company’s viewing and activity data policy says its TVs can track a myriad of things, including settings, search queries, apps usage, and how many people are within 25 feet of the TV. Telly claims that advertisers won’t see personal information when viewing data accumulated from its TVs.

In theory, Telly could help get a new 55-inch 4K TV in the hands of people who wouldn’t be able to afford one otherwise. But at least in this early stage, the company isn’t primarily benefitting low-income households. According to a May Video Week report, Telly’s first 400,000 users have “higher incomes than the US average,” which seems like a draw for advertisers.

Telly’s business model is an outlier, but its CEO thinks the company is ahead of the curve, and advertisers are jumping aboard. Still, Omdia’s Horner believes Telly’s strategy won’t become mainstream. “Amazon and Walmart are the players to watch for trends in smart TV ads and e-commerce. Niche players giving away free TVs in exchange for extreme data collection will not move the market,” he said.

When dumb TVs seem smart

As the TV industry has grown its ad capabilities over the years, shoppers have nearly lost the option to buy a new TV that doesn’t connect to the Internet. Jacob Hoffman-Andrews, senior staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, described the trend of building surveillance into all new smart TVs as “incredibly invasive and little understood.”

In an email to Ars, he added, “Nobody wants a snooping and snitching television, but lately that’s all you can buy.”

Those who want a TV without an Internet connection have few options. You can try to prevent a smart TV from tracking you, but again, turning off ACR and other tracking techniques can be challenging. Some TVs remove basic features like Internet connectivity if you don’t let them track you.

Companies like Telly open a window for other brands to consider more intrusive tracking and ads. Consider a world in which you have to say a brand name at your TV to skip ads, as demonstrated by a Sony patent:

An image from Sony’s patent.

Credit: Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC

It’s likely that Sony won’t make anything of this patent, as is typically the case with patents from research and development teams. But here again, we see how common it is for tech brands that sell TVs to experiment with ad formats and delivery.

Some things TVs already track would have sounded extreme before 2011, when ACR started taking off. For example, using ACR, TVs can reveal to OS providers—and therefore advertisers—the shows watched on the set and whether that content was streamed or watched via an antenna or cable. ACR can even identify DVDs watched on a TV. Per Ad Exchanger: “ACR ingests pixels on-screen to assign a value to each frame,” which is like an “unknown fingerprint.” The OS sends these fingerprints “to a database that logs content available on TV to find a known match and identify the content. Once ACR identifies the show, it can tie that viewing data to a specific household, such as a given household watching The Big Bang Theory at 9 pm.” Advertisers can combine this information with other tactics, like advertisement identification, which assigns a unique ID to ads, to further track TV usage.

But there are plenty who don’t know the extent to which their TVs are monitoring them. Complexity in understanding and controlling TV tracking is especially relevant as more sets incorporate microphones and cameras. Terms of service are often complex, wordy agreements buried in elusive TV settings or online, and companies have ways of strong-arming TV owners into accepting such agreements. Further complicating matters, it’s possible for consumers to disable tracking from the TV OS provider, such as Google, but still be tracked by the TV OEM, like TCL.

Tune in next time…

With TV sales declining and many shoppers prioritizing pricing, smart TV players will continue developing ads that are harder to avoid and better at targeting. Interestingly, Horner told Ars that smart TV advertising revenue exceeding smart TV hardware revenue (as well as ad sale margins surpassing those of hardware) is a US-only trend, albeit one that shows no signs of abating. OLED has become a mainstay in the TV marketplace, and until the next big display technology becomes readily available, OEMs are scrambling to make money in a saturated TV market filled with budget options. Selling ads is an obvious way to bridge the gap between today and The Next Big Thing in TVs.

Indeed, with companies like Samsung and LG making big deals with analytics firms and other brands building their businesses around ads, the industry’s obsession with ads will only intensify. As we’ve seen before with TV commercials, which have gotten more frequent over time, once the ad genie is out of the bottle, it tends to grow, not go back inside.

One side effect we’re already seeing, Horner notes, is “a proliferation of more TV operating systems.” While choice is often a good thing for consumers, it’s important to consider if new options from companies like Amazon, Comcast, and TiVo actually do anything to notably improve the smart TV experience for owners.