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from the Grandpa-what-was-TV-like-before-it-was-enshittified? dept.
OEMs are increasingly focused on using TVs as a way to show customers ads:
People who buy a Fire TV from Amazon are probably looking for a cheap and simple way to get an affordable 4K smart TV. When Amazon announced its first self-branded TVs in September 2021, it touted them as being a "great value." But owners of the devices will soon be paying for some of those savings in the form of more prominently displayed advertisements.
[...] Some of the changes targeting advertisers, like connecting display placement ads with specific in-stream video ads, seem harmless enough. Others could jeopardize the TV-watching experience for owners.
For example, Amazon is preparing to make Alexa with generative AI more useful for finding content on Fire TVs. This could help Alexa, which has struggled alongside other tech giants' voice assistants to generate significant revenue. Amazon gets money every time someone interacts with digital content through Alexa.
However, the company is double-dipping on this idea by also tying ads to generative AI on Fire TVs. When users ask Alexa to help them find media with queries such as "play the show with the guy who plays the lawyer in Breaking Bad," they will see ads that are relevant to the search.
[...] Maines told StreamTV Insider that advertisers had been asking for a way to advertise against Fire TV searches. "It just makes sense to expand our existing sponsor tile offering to show advertisements on the search screen with no extra effort or cost for the advertiser," she said.
[...] Amazon Fire TV users will also start seeing banner ads on the device's home screen for things that have nothing to do with entertainment or media. This ad space was previously reserved for advertising media and entertainment, making the ads feel more relevant, at least. Amazon opening the ad space to more types of advertisers is similar to a move Google TV made early this year.
The company seems to be aware of how dominating these types of advertisements can be. Maines emphasized to StreamTV Insider how the native ads are "right at the top of the Fire TV's home screen" and take "up half the screen."
[...] The banner ads will occupy the first slot in the rotating hero area, which Amazon believes is the first thing Fire TV users see. These users may have purchased a Fire TV primarily for streaming content from ad-free subscriptions, but Maines described how Fire TVs can still manage to force ads on these users.
[...] The changes mirror similar moves from others in the TV maker industry.
Vizio has been shifting its business toward advertising for the past few years. Its Q2 2023 earnings report showed its ad business growing 28 percent compared to the same period in 2022, versus a 15 percent increase for the device business. The device business was still larger that quarter ($252.1 million compared to $142.3 million), but it's clear that the company is eyeing advertising as the way forward.
[...] TV giant LG is also moving that way, CEO William Cho announced in July. In a press release that month, LG said it "intends to transform its TV business portfolio into a 'media and entertainment service provider' by expanding content, services, and advertisement in products."
And then there's Telly—the upcoming TV that has a second screen geared toward showing advertisements, including if the TV is turned off. The screen can also show other content, like sports scores or the weather, but its primary gimmick is that the device is given away for free. The cost, instead, comes from a wealth of mandatory data collection used for selling advertisements and products.
Amazon's Fire TV ad push is reflective of many parts of the TV industry. With TV makers today increasingly focused on selling ads on their devices, we'll continue seeing ads stuffed into TV operating systems, potentially at the cost of UI and hardware improvements. TV sellers, similar to the streaming companies whose apps those TVs serve up, have grown increasingly focused on pleasing advertisers and investors with continuous growth and recurring revenue sources. While those parties may smile, customers are left stomaching more ads on TVs that are collecting more data on them.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday November 13 2023, @05:46PM (2 children)
from the Grandpa-what-was-TV-like-before-it-was-enshittified? dept.
TV was UNshittified. When I was a kid, St Louis had only three analog TV stations; digital didn't exist. Most shows were black and white. There were ghosts every time an airplane passed by, snow whenever somebody used a can opener.
Color started, by the time we got a color TV in the late 1960s most shows were color.
Then there was cable a decade or two later (although it bagan in the 1950s). For ten bucks a month the snow, ghosts, and static in the sound were gone and there were half a dozen extra channels with no censorship or commercials, and great channels like History and Discovery, which did in fact later become shittified, changing from science and history to stupid reality shows, and the cable channels started censoring and showing commercials even when the content was playing, and cable got insanely expensive.
But then TV went digital. No more snow or ghosts over the air, no more big bills just to watch TV. It was again free. Cable is now obsolete but most have yet to notice that.
As to your Fire TV, that's what one gets for buying an Amazon branded thing from Amazon, I learned my lesson with the Ring doorbell and Kindle e-reader. Amazon is a great store, I fucking HATE Walmart, but Amazon's products produce only suckiness. And I was stupid (had the flu and my brain wasn't working properly) when I bough a Sony TV and they "other OSed" it, "upgrading" it to only use mirroring if you have a Sony phone, after I owned it for three years!
TV itself has been unshittified. Lots of TVs have been shittified by their manufacturers.
A Black, Hispanic, or Muslim voting for Trump is like a Jew voting for Hitler
(Score: 2) by jb on Tuesday November 14 2023, @07:34AM (1 child)
No, with digital TV what you get is even worse: if your reception isn't perfect, the signal isn't usable at all.
The artefacts you describe are part of the graceful degradation inherent in all analogue transmission (which, if you don't happen to live close enough to the broadcast antenna, is infinitely preferable to the all-or-nothing of digital transmission).
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday November 18 2023, @03:21PM
True, often channel 17 is unwatchable now, with snow and ghosts you could usually tell what was going on with analog, but who needs it when 4 analog channels were replaced by 20 digital channels? 17 is unwatchable, watch something else.
A Black, Hispanic, or Muslim voting for Trump is like a Jew voting for Hitler