As Distractify detailed, the video in question includes Noem telling people who live outside of the US that the US government will “hunt you down” if they enter the country illegally. Noem also claims in the video that “weak leadership has left our borders wide open, flooding our communities with drugs, human trafficking, and violent criminals.”
“This TV will be out of my house by the end of the week. Fucking dystopian bullshit company,” DoubleJumps said.
Ars Technica hasn’t been able to replicate this internally. We also haven’t seen other reports of Vizio TV owners seeing this ad. Vizio and parent company Walmart didn’t respond to requests for comment.
However, what DoubleJumps detailed is completely within the scope of Vizio’s advertising efforts. Vizio TVs have something called Scenic Mode, which has the sets show, per Vizio, “relaxing, ambient content when your TV is idle for a period of time,” along with ads. Scenic Mode can be disabled, but if it’s enabled, the ads cannot be turned off. Vizio says the ads help it pay for things like the TVs’ free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channels and help keep Vizio TV prices low.
Vizio also has ties to political ads. It has previously boasted about its work with “a political candidate on an ad campaign that combined CTV ads with our Household Connect omnichannel feature to reach potential voters both on their TV sets and on other opted in devices.” The company says it can play a “powerful role… in helping political campaigns reach their intended audiences.”
The possibility that the ad placement was a mistake doesn’t bring that much comfort either. If TV OS operators want to be so dependent on the advertising business, they owe it to customers to at least make sure errors like this (assuming this was an error) don’t happen.
Idle TVs are advertisers’ playthings
Even though Vizio TV owners can turn off Scenic Mode, a company marketing screensaver ads as “an experience that adds to the environment of your home or office” shows how far some TV brands are willing to go to make advertising dollars. Selling screensaver ad space to politicians delivering threats and associating immigration with “drugs, human trafficking,” and violence suggests a lack of discernment over what sort of ads are shown where. A political ad shown during a TV commercial break is reasonable. However, seeing one when using a TV functionality that’s supposed to offer “relaxing, ambient content” seems wholly misguided.
Owners of smart TVs and streaming sticks running Roku OS are already subject to video advertisements on the home screen. Now, Roku is testing what it might look like if it took things a step further and forced people to watch a video ad play before getting to the Roku OS home screen.
Reports of Roku customers seeing video ads automatically play before they could view the OS’ home screen started appearing online this week. A Reddit user, for example, posted yesterday: “I just turned on my Roku and got an … ad for a movie, before I got to the regular Roku home screen.” Multiple apparent users reported seeing an ad for the movie Moana 2. The ads have a close option, but some users appear to have not seen it.
When reached for comment, a Roku spokesperson shared a company statement that confirms that the autoplaying ads are expected behavior but not a permanent part of Roku OS currently. Instead, Roku claimed, it was just trying the ad capability out.
Roku’s representative said that Roku’s business “has and will always require continuous testing and innovation across design, navigation, content, and our first-rate advertising products,” adding:
Our recent test is just the latest example, as we explore new ways to showcase brands and programming while still providing a delightful and simple user experience.
Roku didn’t respond to requests for comment on whether it has plans to make autoplaying ads permanent on Roku OS, which devices are affected, why Roku decided to use autoplaying ads, or customer backlash.
Opinion: The long-rumored Sonos streaming box wasn’t a good idea anyway.
Sonos has canceled plans to release a streaming box, The Verge reported today. The audio company never publicly confirmed that it was making a streaming set-top box, but rumors of its impending release have been floating around since November 2023. With everything that both Sonos and streaming users have going on right now, though, a Sonos-branded rival to the Apple TV 4K wasn’t a good idea anyway.
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman was the first to report on Sonos’ purported streaming ambitions. He reported that Sonos’ device would be a black box that cost $150 to $200.
At first glance, it seemed like a reasonable idea. Sonos was facing increased competition for wireless speakers from big names like Apple and Bose. Meanwhile, Sonos speaker sales growth had slowed down, making portfolio diversification seem like a prudent way to protect business.
By 2025, however, the reported plans for Sonos’ streaming box sounded less reasonable and appealing, while the market for streaming devices had become significantly more competitive.
A saturated market
In February, The Verge, citing anonymous sources, reported that Sonos was now planning a streaming player that would “cost between $200 and $400.” That’s a lot to charge in a market where most people have already found their preferred platform. Those who want something cheap and don’t mind ads settle for something like Roku. People who hate ads opt for an Apple TV box. There are people who swear by their Fire Sticks and plenty who are happy with whatever operating system (OS) their smart TV arrives with. Sonos would have struggled to convince people who have successfully used some of those streaming devices for years that they suddenly need a new one that’s costlier than alternatives, including some smart TVs. In the US especially, the TV OS market is considered heavily saturated, presenting an uphill battle for newcomers.
Without Sonos ever confirming its streaming device, it’s hard to judge what the company would’ve offered to lure people to a new streaming platform. Perhaps the Sonos box could have worked better with Sonos devices than non-Sonos streaming devices. But vendor lock-in isn’t the best way to try to win new customers. That approach would also force Sonos to test if it’s accrued the type of customer loyalty as a company like Apple. Much of the goodwill needed for such customer loyalty was blatantly obliterated, though, during Sonos’ botched app update last year.
According to The Verge, Sonos’ box didn’t even have a standout appearance. The publication said that by February 2025, the box was “deep into development,” and “about as nondescript as streaming hardware gets.”
“Viewed from the top, the device is a flattened black square and slightly thicker than a deck of trading cards,” The Verge reported at the time, citing images it reviewed.
Among the most appealing planned features was unified content from various streaming apps, like Netflix and Max, with “universal search across streaming accounts.” With the growing number of streaming services required to watch all your favorite content, this would be a good way to attract streamers but not necessarily a unique one. The ability to offer a more unified streaming experience is already being tackled by various smart TV OSes, including Samsung Tizen and Amazon Fire OS, as well as the Apple TV app and sister streaming services, like Disney+ and Hulu.
A potentially ad-riddled OS
There’s reason to suspect that the software that Sonos’ streaming box would have come out with would’ve been ad-coddling, user-tracking garbage.
In January, Janko Roettgers reported that ad giant The Trade Desk was supplying Sonos with its “core smart TV OS and facilitating deals with app publishers,” while Sonos worked on the streaming box’s hardware and user interface. The Trade Desk makes one of the world’s biggest demand-side platforms and hasn’t made streaming software or hardware before.
Sonos opting for The Trade Desk’s OS would have represented a boastful commitment to advertisers. Among the features that The Trade Desk markets its TV OS as having are a “cleaner supply chain for streaming TV advertising” and “cross-platform content discovery,” something that Sonos was reportedly targeting for its streaming hardware.
When reached for comment, a Sonos spokesperson confirmed that Sonos was working with The Trade Desk, saying: “We don’t comment on our roadmap, but as has been previously announced we have a long-standing relationship with The Trade Desk and that relationship continues.”
Sonos should take a moment to regroup
It’s also arguable that Sonos has much more important things to do than try to convince people that they need expensive, iterative improvements to their streaming software and hardware. Sonos’ bigger focus should be on convincing customers that it can still handle its bread and butter, which is audio devices.
In November 2023, when word first dropped about Sonos’ reported streaming plans, there was no doubt that Sonos understood how to make quality speakers. But last year, Sonos tarnished its reputation by rushing an app update to coincide with its first wireless headphones, the Sonos Ace. The app’s launch will go down as one of the biggest app failures in history. Sonos employees would go on to say that Sonos rushed the update with insufficient testing, resulting in Sonos device owners suddenly losing key features, like accessibility capabilities and the abilities to edit song queues and playlists and access local music libraries. Owners of older Sonos devices, aka long-time Sonos customers, were the most affected. Amid the fallout, hundreds of people were laid off, Sonos’ market value dropped by $600 million, and the company pegged initial remediation costs at $20 million to $30 million.
At this point, Sonos’ best hope at recovering losses is restoring the customer trust and brand reputation that it took years to build and months to deplete.
Sonos could also use time to recover and distill lessons from its most recent attempt at entering a new device category. Likely due to the app controversy associated with the cans, the Ace hasn’t been meeting sales expectations, per a February report from The Verge citing anonymous sources. If Sonos should learn anything from the Ace, it’s that breaking into a new field requires time, patience, and incredible attention to detail, including how long-time and incoming customers want to use their gear.
Of course, financial blowback from the app debacle could be more directly behind why Sonos isn’t releasing a streaming box. Additionally, Sonos saw numerous executive changes following the app fiasco, including the departure of the CEO who greenlit the streaming box, Patrick Spence. New executive leaders, including a new chief product officer and chief marketing officer, could have different views on the value of Sonos to enter the streaming market too.
Sonos’ spokesperson didn’t answer Ars’ questions about Sonos’ reported plans to cancel the streaming box and whether the decision is related to the company’s app woes.
Sonos may have dodged a bullet
Ultimately, it didn’t sound like Sonos’ streaming box had the greatest potential to disrupt other TV streaming platforms already settled into people’s homes. It’s possible Sonos had other products that weren’t leaked. But the company would have had to come up with a unique and helpful feature in order to command a high price and compete with the likes of Apple’s TV 4K set-top box.
Even if Sonos came up with some killer feature or app for its streaming box, people are a lot less likely to gamble on a new product from the company now than they were before 2024’s app catastrophe. Sonos should prove that it can handle the basics before attempting to upcharge technologists for new streaming hardware.
Sonos’ streaming ambitions may only be off the table “for now,” new CEO Tom Conrad reportedly told employees today, per The Verge. But it’s probably best that Sonos focus its attention elsewhere for a while.
Scharon is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica writing news, reviews, and analysis on consumer gadgets and services. She’s been reporting on technology for over 10 years, with bylines at Tom’s Hardware, Channelnomics, and CRN UK.
As you may have noticed—either through the text of this article or your own ears—The Calm Act doesn’t apply to streaming services. And because The Calm Act doesn’t affect commercials viewed on the Internet, online services providing access to broadcast channels, like YouTube TV and Sling, don’t have to follow the rules. This is despite such services distributing the same content as linear TV providers.
For years, this made sense. The majority of TV viewing occurred through broadcast, cable, or satellite access. Further, services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video used to be considered safe havens from constant advertisements. But today, streaming services are more popular than ever and have grown to love ads, which have become critical to most platforms’ business models. Further, many streaming services are airing more live events. These events, like sports games, show commercials to all subscribers, even those with a so-called “ad-free” subscription.
Separate from the Calm Act violation complaints, the FCC noted this month that other recent complaints it has seen illustrate “growing concern with the loudness of commercials on streaming services and other online platforms.” If the FCC decides to apply Calm Act rules to the web, it would need to create new methods for ensuring compliance, it said.
Nielsen’s most recent data on how people watch TV. Credit: Nielsen
The FCC didn’t specify what’s behind the spike in consumers’ commercial complaints. Perhaps with declining audiences, traditional TV providers thought it would be less likely for anyone to notice and formally complain about Ozempic ads shouting at them. Twelve years have passed since the rules took effect, so it’s also possible that organizations are getting lackadaisical about ensuring compliance or have dwindling resources.
With Americans spending similar amounts of time—if not longer—watching TV online versus via broadcast, cable, and satellite, The Calm Act would have to take on the web in order to maximize effectiveness. The streaming industry is young, though, and operates differently than linear TV distribution, presenting new regulation challenges.
“I do fear that the pressure to make better TVs will be lost…”
If you’re looking to buy a TV in 2025, you may be disappointed by the types of advancements TV brands will be prioritizing in the new year. While there’s an audience of enthusiasts interested in developments in tech like OLED, QDEL, and Micro LED, plus other features like transparency and improved audio, that doesn’t appear to be what the industry is focused on.
Today’s TV selection has a serious dependency on advertisements and user tracking. In 2025, we expect competition in the TV industry to center around TV operating systems (OSes) and TVs’ ability to deliver more relevant advertisements to viewers.
That yields a complicated question for shoppers: Are you willing to share your data with retail conglomerates and ad giants to save money on a TV?
Vizio is a Walmart brand now
One of the most impactful changes to the TV market next year will be Walmart owning Vizio. For Walmart, the deal, which closed on December 3 for approximately $2.3 billion, is about owning the data collection capabilities of Vizio’s SmartCast OS. For years, Vizio has been shifting its business from hardware sales to Platform+, “which consists largely of its advertising business” and “now accounts for all the company’s gross profit,” as Walmart noted when announcing the acquisition.
Walmart will use data collected from Vizio TVs to fuel its ad business, which sells ads on the OSes of its TVs (including Vizio and Onn brand TVs) and point-of-sale machines in Walmart stores. In a December 3 statement, Walmart confirmed its intentions with Vizio:
The acquisition… allows Walmart to serve its customers in new ways to enhance their shopping journeys. It will also bring to market new and differentiated ways for advertisers to meaningfully connect with customers at scale and boost product discovery, helping brands achieve greater impact from their advertising investments with Walmart Connect—the company’s retail media business in the US.
In 2025, buying a Vizio TV won’t just mean buying a TV from a company that’s essentially an ad business. It will mean fueling Walmart’s ad business. With Walmart also owning Onn and Amazon owning Fire TVs, that means there’s one less TV brand that isn’t a cog in a retail giant’s ever-expanding ad machine. With a history that includes complaints around working conditions and questionable products, including some that are straight scams, some people (including numerous Ars commenters) try to avoid commerce giants like Walmart and Amazon. In 2025, that will be harder for people looking for a new TV, especially an inexpensive one.
“Roku is at grave risk”
Further, Walmart has expressed a goal of becoming one of the 10 biggest ad companies, with the ad business notably having higher margins than groceries. It could use Vizio, via more plentiful and/or intrusive ads, to fuel those goals.
And Walmart’s TV market share is set to grow in the new year. Paul Gray, research director of consumer electronics and devices at Omdia, told Ars Technica he expects that “the new combined sales (Vizio plus Walmart’s white label) will be bigger than the current market leader Samsung.”
There are also potential implications related to how Walmart decides to distribute TVs post-acquisition. As Patrick Horner, practice leader of consumer electronics at Omdia, told Ars:
One of the possibilities is that Walmart could make use of the Vizio operating system a condition for placement in stores. This could change not only the Onn/Vizio TVs but may also include the Chinese brands. The [Korean] and Japanese brands may resist, as they have premium brand positioning, but the Chinese brands would be vulnerable. Roku is at grave risk.
Roku acquisition?
With Walmart set to challenge Roku, some analysts anticipate that Roku will be acquired in 2025. In December, Guggenheim analysts predicted that ad tech firm The Trade Desk, which is launching its own TV OS, will look to buy Roku to scale its OS business.
Needham & Company’s Laura Martin also thinks an acquisition—by The Trade Desk or possibly one of Walmart’s retail competitors—could be on the horizon.
‘’Walmart has told you by buying Vizio that these large retailers need a connected television advertising platform to tie purchases to,” Martin told Bloomberg. “That means Target and other large retailers have that reason to buy Roku to tie Roku’s connected television ad units to their sales in their retail stores. And by the way, Roku has much higher margins than any retailer.’”
She also pointed to Amazon as a potential buyer, noting that it might be able to use Roku’s user data to feed large language models.
Roku was already emboldened enough in 2024 to introduce home screen video ads to its TVs and streaming devices and has even explored technology for showing ads over anything plugged into a Roku set. Imagine how using Roku devices might further evolve if owned by a company like The Trade Desk or Amazon with deep interests in ads and tracking.
TV owners accustomed to being tracked
TV brands have become so dependent on ads that some are selling TVs at a loss to push ads. How did we get to the point where TV brands view their hardware as a way to track and sell to viewers? Part of the reason TV OSes are pushing the limits on ads is that many viewers seem willing to accept them, especially in the name of saving money.
Per the North American Q2 2024 TiVo Video Trends Report, 64.3 percent of subscription video-on-demand users subscribe to an ad-supported tier (compared to 48 percent in Q2 2023). And users are showing more tolerance to ads, with 77.8 percent saying they are “tolerant” or “in favor of” ads, up from 74 percent in Q2 2023. This is compared to 22.2 percent of respondents saying they’re “averse” to ads. TiVo surveyed 4,490 people in the US and Canada ages 18 and up for the report.
“Based on streaming services, many consumers see advertising as a small price to pay for lower cash costs,” Horner said.
The analyst added:
While some consumers will be sensitive to privacy issues or intrusive advertising, at the same time, most people have shown themselves entirely comfortable with being tracked by (for example) social media.
Alan Wolk, co-founder and lead analyst at the TVREV TV and streaming analyst group, agreed that platforms like Instagram have proven people’s willingness to accept ads and tracking, particularly if it leads to them seeing more relevant advertisements or giving shows or movies better ratings. According to the analyst, customers seem to think, “Google is tracking my finances, my porn habits, my everything. Why do I care if NBC knows that I watch football and The Tonight Show?”
While Ars readers may be more guarded about Google having an insider look at their data, many web users have a more accepting attitude. This has opened the door for TVs to test users’ max tolerance for ads and tracking to deliver more relevant ads.
That said, there’s a fine line.
“Companies have to be careful of… finding that line between taking in advertising, especially display ads on the home screen or whatnot, and it becoming overwhelming [for viewers],” Wolk said.
One of the fastest-growing ad vehicles for TVs currently and into 2025 is free, ad-supported streaming television (FAST) channels that come preloaded and make money from targeted ads. TCL is already experimenting with what viewers will accept here. It recently premiered movies made with generative AI that it hopes will fuel its FAST business while saving money. TCL believes that passive viewers will accept a lot of free content, even AI-generated movies and shows. But some viewers are extremely put off by such media, and there’s a risk of souring the reputation of some FAST services.
OS wars
We can expect more competition from TV OS operators in 2025, including from companies that traditionally have had no place in consumer hardware, like ad tech giant The Trade Desk. These firms face steep competition, though. Ultimately, the battle of TV OSes could end up driving improvements around usability, content recommendations, and, for better or worse, ad targeting.
Following heightened competition among TV OSes, Omdia’s Gray expects winners to start emerging, followed by consolidation.
“I expect that the final state will be a big winner, a couple of sizeable players, and some niche offerings,” he said.
Companies without backgrounds in consumer tech will have difficulty getting a foot into an already crowded market, which means we may not have to worry much about companies like The Trade Desk taking over our TVs.
“I have yet to meet a single person who hasn’t looked at me quizzically and said, ‘Wait, what are they thinking?’ Because the US market for the operating system is very tight,” Wolk said. “… So for American consumers, I don’t think we’ll see too many new entrants.”
You can also expect Comcast and Charter to push deeper into TV software as they deal with plummeting cable businesses. In November, they made a deal to put their joint venture’s TV OS, Xumo OS, in Hisense TVs that will be sold in Target. Xumo TVs are already available in almost 8,000 locations, Comcast and Charter said in November. The companies claimed that the retailers selling Xumo TVs “represent nearly 75 percent of all smart TV sales in the US.”
Meanwhile, Xperi Corp. said in November that it expected its TiVo OS to be in 2 million TVs by the end of 2024 and 7 million TVs by the end of 2025. At the heart of Tivo OS is TiVo One, which TiVo describes as a “cross-screen ad platform for new inventory combined with audience targeting and monetization” that is available in TVs and car displays. Announcing TiVo One in May, Xperi declared that the “advertising market is projected to reach [$36] billion” by 2026, meaning that “advertising on smart TVs has never been more imperative.”
But as competition intensifies and pushes the market into selecting a few “sizeable players,” as Gray put it, there’s more pressure for companies to make their OSes stand out to TV owners. This is due to advertising interests, but it also means more focus on making TVs easier to use and better able to help people find something to watch.
Not a lot of options
At the start of this article, we asked if you’d be willing to share your data with retail conglomerates and ad giants to save money on a TV. But the truth is there aren’t many alternative options beyond disconnecting your TV from the Internet or paying for an Apple TV streaming device in addition to your TV. Indeed, amid a war among OSes, many Ars readers will opt not to leverage ad-filled software at all. This shows a disconnect between TV makers and a core audience while suggesting limits in terms of new TV experiences next year.
Still, analysts agree that even among more expensive TV brands, there has been a shift toward building out ad businesses and OSes over improving hardware features like audio.
“This is a low-margin business, and even in the premium segment, the revenues from ads and data are significant. Also, the sort of consumer who buys a premium TV is likely to be especially interesting to advertisers,” Gray said.
Some worry about what this means for TV innovation. With software being at the center of TV businesses, there seems to be less incentive to drive hardware-related advancements. Gray echoed this sentiment while acknowledging that the current state of TVs is at least driving down TV prices.
“I do fear that the pressure to make better TVs will be lost and that matters such as… durability and performance risk being de-prioritized,” he said.
Vendors are largely leaving shoppers to drive improvements themselves, such as by buying additional gadgets like soundbars, Wolk noted.
In 2025, TVs will continue focusing innovation around software, which has immediate returns via ad sales compared to new hardware, which can take years to develop and catch on with shoppers. For some, this is creating a strong demand for dumb TVs, but unfortunately, there are no immediate signs of that becoming a trend.
As Horner put it, “This is an advertising/e-commerce-driven market, not a consumer-driven market. TV content is just the bait in the trap.”
Scharon is Ars Technica’s Senior Product Reviewer writing news, reviews, and analysis on consumer technology, including laptops, mechanical keyboards, and monitors. She’s based in Brooklyn.
Advertising has become a focal point of TV software. We’re seeing companies that sell TV sets be increasingly interested in leveraging TV operating systems (OSes) for ads and tracking. This has led to bold new strategies, like an adtech firm launching a TV OS and ads on TV screensavers.
With new short films set to debut on its free streaming service tomorrow, TV-maker TCL is positing a new approach to monetizing TV owners and to film and TV production that sees reduced costs through reliance on generative AI and targeted ads.
TCL’s five short films are part of a company initiative to get people more accustomed to movies and TV shows made with generative AI. The movies will “be promoted and featured prominently on” TCL’s free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) service, TCLtv+, TCL announced in November. TCLtv+has hundreds of FAST channels and comes on TCL-brand TVs using various OSes, including Google TV and Roku OS.
Some of the movies have real actors. You may even recognize some, (like Kellita Smith, who played Bernie Mac’s wife, Wanda, on The Bernie Mac Show). Others feature characters made through generative AI. All the films use generative AI for special effects and/or animations and took 12 weeks to make, 404 Media, which attended a screening of the movies, reported today. AI tools used include ComfyUI, Nuke, and Runway, 404 reported. However, all of the TCL short movies were written, directed, and scored by real humans (again, including by people you may be familiar with). At the screening, Chris Regina, TCL’s chief content officer for North America, told attendees that “over 50 animators, editors, effects artists, professional researchers, [and] scientists” worked on the movies.
I’ve shared the movies below for you to judge for yourself, but as a spoiler, you can imagine the quality of short films made to promote a service that was created for targeted ads and that use generative AI for fast, affordable content creation. AI-generated videos are expected to improve, but it’s yet to be seen if a TV brand like TCL will commit to finding the best and most natural ways to use generative AI for video production. Currently, TCL’s movies demonstrate the limits of AI-generated video, such as odd background imagery and heavy use of narration that can distract from badly synced audio.
Per The Trade Desk, Ventura’s other top “benefits” will include a “cleaner supply chain for streaming TV advertising, minimizing supply chain hops and costs—ensuring maximum ROI for every advertising dollar and optimized yield for publishers” and improved ad targeting.
TVs sold at a loss in order to bolster ad businesses
The Trade Desk plans to sell Ventura to TV manufacturers and distributors, plus other types of companies, like airlines, hotel chains, and “gaming companies,” Axios reported.
The ad tech firm says it isn’t looking to make money off of the OS directly and doesn’t plan to make hardware.
Instead, Ventura is supposed to benefit The Trade Desk by helping its advertiser customers reach more people. Differing from how TV owners traditionally view TV software’s purpose, Ventura will prioritize the ability to show TV owners the most appealing type of ads. Green will consider Ventura a success “if it drives more pricing transparency and stronger measurement for the CTV advertising ecosystem writ large,” per Axios.
Ventura has reportedly garnered interest from Sonos already, CEO Patrick Spence told Axios. Sonos is rumored to be developing a streaming set-top box. The audio company’s serious and public consideration of something like Ventura hints at the type of business approach it may take with streaming hardware.
The Trade Desk’s interest in creating a TV OS centered on being helpful to advertisers indicates how important ads have become to TVs and/or TV software companies. Some, like Vizio and Roku, have embraced this shift so much that they’re selling TVs “at somewhere between -3 and -7 percent margin” in a scramble to attract users, Paul Gray, Omdia’s research director of consumer electronics and devices, said at a CTV industry conference earlier this month, per Broadband TV News. Then there’s Telly, a startup that has given TVs away for free so it can sell and track ads. (Telly TVs also have a secondary screen that can show ads when the TV is off.)
As companies continue to leverage TV software to sell ads and gather user data, TV owners will likely continue seeing fewer options for an ad-free TV viewing experience.
Amazon is shutting down Freevee, its free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) service, as it heightens focus on selling ads on its Prime Video subscription service.
Amazon, which has owned IMDb since 1998, launched Freevee as IMDb Freedive in 2019. The service let people watch movies and shows, including Freevee originals, on demand without a subscription fee. Amazon’s streaming offering was also previously known as IMDb TV and rebranded to Amazon Freevee in 2022.
According to a report from Deadline this week, Freevee is being “phased out over the coming weeks,” but a firm closing date hasn’t been shared publicly.
Explaining the move to Deadline, an Amazon spokesperson said:
To deliver a simpler viewing experience for customers, we have decided to phase out Freevee branding. There will be no change to the content available for Prime members, and a vast offering of free streaming content will still be accessible for non-Prime members, including select Originals from Amazon MGM Studios, a variety of licensed movies and series, and a broad library of FAST Channels – all available on Prime Video.
The shutdown also means that producers can no longer pitch shows to Freevee as Freevee originals, and “any pending deals for such projects have been cancelled,” Deadline reported.
Freevee shows still available for free
Freevee original shows include Jury Duty, with James Marsden, Judy Justice, with Judge Judy Sheindlin, and Bosch: Legacy, a continuation of the Prime Video original series Bosch. The Freevee originals are expected to be available to watch on Prime Video after Freevee closes. People won’t need a Prime Video or Prime subscription in order to watch these shows. As of this writing, I was also able to play some Freevee original movies without logging in to a Prime Video or Prime account. Prime Video has also made some Prime Video originals, like The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, available under a “Freevee” section in Prime Video where people can watch for free if they log in to an Amazon (Prime Video or Prime subscriptions not required) account. Before this week’s announcement, Prime Video and Freevee were already sharing some content.
At the same time, the rest of WBD is in a period of duress as the cable and movie industries struggle. Films like Beetlejuice Beetlejuice failed to reach the same success as last year’s Barbie, sending WBD studios’ revenue down 17 percent and its theatrical revenue down 40 percent. As WBD CEO David Zaslav put it:
Inconsistency also remains an issue at our Motion Picture Studio, as reinforced recently by the disappointing results of Joker 2.
Some things that helped buoy WBD’s legacy businesses won’t be around the next time WBD execs speak to investors. This includes revenue from distributing the Olympics in Europe and gains from the Hollywood writers’ and actors’ strikes ending. With WBD’s networks business also understandably down, WBD’s overall revenue decreased 3 percent YoY. It’s natural for the company to lean more on its strongest leg (streaming) to help support the others.
WBD wants more streaming M&As
Today, Zaslav reiterated earlier stated beliefs that the burgeoning streaming industry needs more mergers and acquisitions activity to maintain profitability. He discussed complications for users, who have to consider various services’ pricing and are “Googling where a show is, or where a sport is, and you’re going from one to another, and there’s so many.” He added:
It’s not sustainable. And there probably should have been more meaningful consolidation… You’re starting to see fairly large players saying, ‘Hey, maybe I should be a part of you. Or maybe I should be a part of somebody else.’
Zaslav said that it’s too early to know if Donald Trump’s presidency will boost these interests. But he suggested that the incoming administration “may offer a pace of change and an opportunity for consolidation that may be quite different [and] that would provide a real positive and accelerated impact on this industry that’s needed.”
It’s also too early to know if streaming consolidation would help subscribers fed up with rising prices and growing ad loads. But for now, that’s about all we can bet on from streaming services like Max.
Similarly, the report’s authors describe concerns that the CTV industry’s extensive data collection and tracking could potentially have a political impact. It asserts that political candidates could use such data to run “covert personalized campaigns” leveraging information on things like political orientations and “emotional states”:
With no transparency or oversight, these practices could unleash millions of personalized, manipulative and highly targeted political ads, spread disinformation, and further exacerbate the political polarization that threatens a healthy democratic culture in the US.
“Potential discriminatory impacts”
The CDD’s report claims that Black, Hispanic, and Asian-Americans in the US are being “singled out by marketers as highly lucrative targets,” due to fast adoption of new digital media services and brand loyalty. Black and Hispanic communities are key advertising targets for FAST channels, per the report. Chester told Ars:
There are major potential discriminatory impacts from CTV’s harvesting of data from communities of color.
He pointed to “growing widespread racial and ethnic data” collection for ad targeting and marketing.
“We believe this is sensitive information that should not be applied to the data profiles used for targeting on CTV and across other platforms. … Its use in political advertising on CTV will enable widespread disinformation and voter suppression campaigns targeting these communities,” Chester said.
Regulation
In a letter sent to the FTC, FCC, California attorney general, and CPPA , the CDD asked for an investigation into the US’ CTV industry, “including on antitrust, consumer protection, and privacy grounds.” The CDD emphasized the challenges that streamers—including those who pay for ad-free streaming—face in protecting their data from advertisers.
“Connected television has taken root and grown as an unregulated medium in the United States, along with the other platforms, devices, and applications that are part of the massive internet industry,” the report says.
The group asks for the FTC and FCC to investigate CTV practices and consider building on current legislation, like the 1988 Video Privacy Protection Act. They also request that antitrust regulators delve deeply into the business practices of CTV players like Amazon, Comcast, and Disney to help build “competition and diversity in the digital and connected TV marketplace.”
PlayStation 5 owners are reporting advertisements on the device’s home screen. Frustratingly, the ads seem to be rather difficult to disable, and some are also outdated ads and/or confusing content.
The ads, visible on users’ home screens when they hover over a game title, can only be removed if you disconnect from the Internet, IGN reported today. However, that would block a lot of the console’s functionality. The PS5 dashboard previously had ads but not on the home screen.
Before this recent development, people would see game art if they hovered over a game icon on the PS5’s home screen. Now, doing so reportedly brings up dated advertisements. For example, IGN reported seeing an ad for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse “coming soon exclusively in cinemas” when hovering over the Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales game. Webheads will of course recall that the Spider-Verse movie came out in June 2023.
Similarly, going to NBA 2K25 reportedly shows an ad for gaining early access. But the game came out early this month.
Per IGN, it seems that the console is “pulling in the latest news for each game, whether it be a YouTube video, patch notes, or even the announcement of a different game entirely.” That means that not all games are showing advertisements. Instead, some show an image for a YouTube video about the game or a note about patch notes or updates for the game.
There also seem to be some mix-ups, with MP1st reporting seeing an ad for the LEGO Horizon Adventures game when hovering over the icon for Horizon Zero Dawn. The publication wrote: “The ad also make[s it] confusing a bit, as… it looks like you’re playing LEGO Horizon Adventures and not the actual Horizon game we’re on.”
Some games, like Astro Bot, however, don’t seem to be affected by the changes, per IGN.
Annoyed and confused
Gamers noticing the change have taken to the web to share their annoyance, disappointment, and, at times, confusion about the content suddenly forced into the PS5’s home screen.
“As someone playing through the Spiderman series now, this confused the hell out of me,” Crack_an_ag said via Reddit.
Others are urging Sony to either remove the feature or fix it so that it can be helpful, while others argue that the feature couldn’t be helpful regardless.
“Forcing every single game to make its latest news story its dashboard art is SO stupid as no one game uses the news feature consistently,” Reddit user jackcos wrote.
Sam88FPS, meanwhile, noted that ads drove them from Xbox to PlayStation:
One of the main reasons I moved away from Xbox was the fact they started to build the Xbox UI around ads and pushing [Game Pass]. Hopefully Sony listens more because Xbox absolutely refused to, in fact, they even added full screen startup ads lmao.
It’s unclear what exactly prompted this change. Some suspect it’s related to firmware update 24.06-10.00.00. But that update came out on September 12, and, as IGN noted, its patch notes don’t say anything about this. Considering the obvious problems and mix of content being populated, it’s possible that Sony is working out some kinks and that eventually the content shown on users’ home screens will become more relevant or consistent. The change has also come a few days after a developer claimed that Sony lost $400 million after pulling the Concord online game after just two weeks, prompting digs at Sony and unconfirmed theories that Sony is trying to make up for financial losses with ads.
Ars Technica has reached out to Sony about why it decided to add non-removable ads to the PS5 home screen and about the outdated and otherwise perplexing content being displayed. We’ll let you know if we hear back.
Last month, Ars Technica went on a deep dive into the rapid growth of ads in TV software. Less than three weeks later, LG announced that it was adding advertisements to its TVs’ screensavers. The move embodies how ads are a growing and virtually inescapable part of the TV-viewing experience—even when you’re not watching anything.
As you might have expected, LG didn’t make a big, splashy announcement to consumers or LG TV owners about this new ad format. Instead, and ostensibly strategically, the September 5 announcement was made to advertisers. LG appears to know that screensaver ads aren’t a feature that excites users. Still, it and many other TV makers are happy to shove ads into the software of already-purchased devices.
LG TV owners may have already spotted the ads or learned about them via FlatpanelsHD, which today reported seeing a full-screen ad on the screensaver for LG’s latest flagship TV, the G4. “The ad appeared before the conventional screensaver kicks in,” per the website, “and was localized to the region the TV was set to.” (You can see images that FlatpanelsHD provided of the ads here, here, and here.) The reviewer reported seeing an ad for LG’s free ad-supported streaming channel, LG Channels, as well as third-party ads.
LG has put these ads on by default, according to FlatpanelsHD, but you can disable them in the TVs’ settings. Still, the introduction of ads during a screensaver, shown during a pause in TV viewing that some TVs use as an opportunity to show art or personal photos that amplify the space, illustrates the high priority that ad dollars and tracking have among today’s TVs—even new top-of-the-line ones.
According to LG’s ads arm, LG AD Solutions, the screensaver ads activate “across the home screen, LG Channels, and Content Store on LG smart TVs.” The point is to capitalize “on idle screen time, turning what may be perceived as a period of downtime into a valuable engagement opportunity.” LG AD Solutions claims that it has commissioned testing showing that screensaver ads drive “on average a 2.5 times higher lift in brand awareness.”
In a statement, LG AD Solutions CTO Dave Rudnick seemed to acknowledge that people whose TVs are showing screensavers are often trying to do something other than look at adverts.
“In the past, a screensaver ad might have indicated that viewers had left the room, but today’s viewing habits are markedly different,” he said. “Now, 93 percent of viewers multitask while watching TV, engaging in activities like messaging, shopping, browsing social media, or playing games on their phones.”
TV advertising: The next generation
The addition of screensaver ads that users can disable may sound like a comparatively smaller disruption as far as TV operating system (OS) ads go. But the incorporation of new ad formats into TV OSes’ various nooks and crannies is a slippery slope. Some TV brands are even centered more on ads than selling hardware. Unfortunately, it’s up to OS operators and TV OEMs to decide where the line is, including for already-purchased TVs. User and advertiser interests don’t always align, making TV streaming platforms without third-party ads, such as Apple TV, increasingly scarce gems.
LG has been expanding its business for selling and tracking ads shown on LG TVs. It has a partnership with Nielsen that sends automatic content-recognition data gathered from LG TVs to Nielsen, for example. Additionally, LG has boasted of plans to evolve from a hardware business into a “media and entertainment platform,” which includes selling ads. The South Korean company has also expressed strong interest in shopable TV ads.
For its part, LG’s growing ad interests have led it to launch a new LG Ad Solutions division this month that’s focused on developing new ways to show ads to and track smart TV users. In a statement, Rudnick said Innovation Labs is seeking to “push the boundaries” of smart-TV advertising and drive “next-generation advertising,” including interactive ads, on smart TVs.
LG is adapting to a changing market
LG claims to have done its homework before deciding to inject ads into its TVs’ screensavers. LG Ad Solutions-commissioned research, which was reportedly conducted and measured by Lucid, a consumer market research firm, found that screensaver ads increase brand awareness, especially among adults 45 and up and women with a household income greater than $80,000 (assumedly annually).
LG’s ads push comes as it’s challenged to continue finding revenue and growth from its TV business while TVs get more advanced and reliable and are able to get new features via software updates. Meanwhile, advertisers are challenged to find ways to continue reaching TV viewers in a world shifting from linear TV to streaming and web-based entertainment that’s often sold with the option of being commercial-free. Although lower-priced TVs, like those running Roku OS, may have a reputation for more ads, they’re also doing well in the market.
Market conditions and changing TV users’ habits are forcing LG to adapt the way it makes money from TVs. Unfortunately for those adverse to ads, that means pushing more commercials and finding better ways to track viewers.
