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LG turns OLED TVs into billboards because you’re busy playing on your phone
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LG is beginning to display screensaver ads to owners of its televisions, even those who’ve splashed out on its notoriously expensive OLED sets.
FlatpanelsHDreportsthat when the screen becomes inactive and the webOS screensaver kicks in, viewers are starting to see full-screen advertisements “localised to the region the TV is set to.”
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Commercials for the LG Channels streaming platform as well as other ‘sponsored’ options for electric cars were spotted running on a 2024 LG smart TV model.
The ads can be turned off, thankfully, through the TVs settings. If you’re seeing them, you can browse to Settings > Additional Settings > Screen Saver Promotion. There, you’ll find a toggle switch that you can turn off. Whether this will get rid of the ads completely, remains to be seen.
What has flown under the radar until today is LG’s brazenness about the advertising strategy. In ablog poston the LG Ad Solutions webpage earlier this month, the company said that “idle time isn’t wasted time” anymore thanks to the “novel ad format.”
“Challenging the assumption that a viewer’s attention is limited once the television screen is idle, LG Ad Solutions tested the assumption and found that Screensaver ads drove on average a 2.5 times higher lift in brand awareness,” the company’s advertising division said.
It pointed out that 93% of TV viewers are doing so while watching doing other things like messaging, shopping, browsing social media or playing games on their phones. So now, it’s turning the TV into a billboard, in case you glance up from your smartphone every once in a while.
Have you noticed the advertisements on your LG set? Let us know @trustedreviews on X.
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Chris Smith is a freelance technology journalist for a host of UK tech publications, including Trusted Reviews. He’s based in South Florida, USA. …
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Founded in 2003, Trusted Reviews exists to give our readers thorough, unbiased and independent advice on what to buy.
Today, we have millions of users a month from around the world, and assess more than 1,000 products a year.
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
