Soon, everything you love will have ads. Even the moon, if some folks have their way. For now, though, it’s your TV that could feature ads in unexpected places. Some models of LG TV have been spotting displaying new screensaver ads.
This doesn’t appear to be a widespread phenomenon yet but it is a phenomenon. The folks over at FlatpanelsHD found and recorded several instances of screensaver ads natively displayed by LG. The folks who made the TV.
LG takes a chance
The ads show up briefly before the screensaver kicks in and appear tailored to whichever region the TV set is set to. The ad, for LG Channels, was seen on one of the company’s 2024 G4 OLED sets. The advert localised itself based on the region it was set to.
At the moment there aren’t external ads showing, nor do they have sound but that may change. Advertising to people who have paid for their TVs is certainly part of the company’s agenda. The instances of screensaver ads were heralded by a press release earlier this month from LG Ad Solutions, “the leader in Connected TV (CTV) and cross-screen advertising”.
The release announced Native Screensaver Ads, the exact thing we’re talking about here. The ads are intended to use “idle screen time” but may go as far as “home screen takeovers”, which isn’t a term we’d like to hear applied to a product we are supposed to own outright. Unless there’s some sort of discount on the purchase price, displaying ads on a TV in this manner kinda sucks.
Now’s your chance
At present it’s still possible to opt out of these ads, should you find them appearing on your newly bought LG TV. Users can head to Settings and then Additional Settings. Turning off the Screen Saver Promotions setting should kill off the screensaver ads but this might not remain the case forever. A day might come when users aren’t given the choice to opt out. We can only hope that day will also include a significant downward adjustment in the price of the company’s TVs.
This isn’t the first out-of-the-box advertising-related idea LG has had. The company has previously targeted windows for displaying ads, with a trial being run on various trains. Here, at least, the company controls all of the hardware and, potentially, all of the ad revenue. Provided users don’t just opt out, that is.