Have you ever wondered why brand-new televisions with massive, bright, and vivid screens are so cheap these days? It's all about the ads. Once relegated to the cheapest televisions, owners of LG's flagship CX line are now discovering that they, too, are enjoying unprompted advertising on their television sets, according to a report from The Verge.
The Verge's Chris Welch was updating streaming apps on his television when an ad popped up and played with sound in the corner of his screen without a way to skip it or stop it. It was a short one, but a pop-up, hover-over ad all the same. Other users on Twitter and Reddit have noticed the same behavior, so this doesn't appear to be an isolated occurrence. What's new about this is that the LG CX television Welch witnessed the ad on is one of the brand's upper-middle range televisions, the ones that users buy for a premium experience. Every smart TV has ads to some degree, but this a step beyond ads showing up in the corner of the app browser or input menu.
A 2019 interview by The Verge with Vizio Chief Technology Officer Bill Baxter does a good job of explaining this. "This is a cutthroat industry. It's a 6% margin industry. The greater strategy is I really don't need to make money off of the TV. I need to cover my cost," Baxter said. "It's not just about data collection, it's about post-purchase monetization of the TV."
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