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Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

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Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#321

Post by marcosdumay »

WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #254
Nextgrid wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that a large part of this ad- and marketing-driven economy is based on this. The reason they predict their revenue will go up (which it will, at least in the short term until the market adjusts) is because they have a lot of customers already lined up to pay them to show ads on their TVs. Those customers' marketing departments decided to pay money to include their ads on TVs because a similar process was fo…

The truth is noone buys anything from any ads... however brand awareness is a real thing. If you see a fancy ad from a company, they must be a profitable company that has a great product so you might be inclined to buy it or suggest it next time you're looking for this category of products.

Oh, yes, brand awareness is a real thing. For example, a lot of people will avoid Samsung TVs right now.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#322

Post by andygcook »

brahyam wrote: post #270
Nextgrid wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that a large part of this ad- and marketing-driven economy is based on this. The reason they predict their revenue will go up (which it will, at least in the short term until the market adjusts) is because they have a lot of customers already lined up to pay them to show ads on their TVs. Those customers' marketing departments decided to pay money to include their ads on TVs because a similar process was fo…

> looking at the companies who buy Google AdWords on their own brand - if someone's searching for your brand on Google your website will already be the top result - a click on the ad is not a true "conversion" in this case and is just wasted money Could be a true conversion given that all competitors are paying adwords on your brand name search also. If you don't have them you will probably appear after a long list o…

Agreed. This happened with my startup. Basecamp complains about this practice frequently too: https://mobile.twitter.com/jasonfried/status/116898696270498...

Pro tip: if the competitor uses your trademark in their ad copy, you can do a takedown notice and usually the ads will be removed.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#324

Post by kalleboo »

WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #260
cmckn wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What TV’s fall into the “dumb” category these days? I can’t go back from OLED and I don’t think anything at that price point will lack the “smart” features, unless it’s a commercial offering.

TCL Roku is pretty "dumbish". You can install it without an account, plug in an antenna and go to town. You can even connect it to wifi then use Youtube or Netflix. Haven't seen any funky ads. My only peeve is that the controller doesn't have a full number pad which makes it a little derpy for the older generation.

I found this list of TVs that have ads or not[0], and the first item in the list with ads was a TCL Roku, accompanied with a screenshot of a Home Screen background ad[1]

[0] https://www.rtings.com/tv/tests/ads-in-smart-tv

[1] https://i.rtings.com/images/reviews/tv/tcl/s405/s405-ads-lar...

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#325

Post by swypych »

The problem I see with these companies, where HW is the focus and not SW, is that their tech stack is a joke. I have no faith in their security models, or their ability to protect my privacy. These features always feel like they have been just added on with little thought of the surrounding environment. Anyone who has developed a Tizen, LG webOS, Visio app, will understand what I am mean. The platforms have significant variations between model years, and developers are flat out told that features will not be fixed on 2-3 year old TVs. This seems insane considering the level of trust they ask from their customer.

Buyer BEWARE!

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#326

Post by ClumsyPilot »

qcq36 wrote: post #226
tangjurine wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're in the middle of transitioning from making decisions based on pure intuition to being purely logical and data-driven... I wonder if that's such a good idea. There was this article a while back I read that talked about how native peoples made poisonous foods edible. Some processes were extremely convoluted and unreasonable, but it worked, and efforts by a "reasonable" man to make the process more efficient would…

There’s something rather extraordinary about this community, in particular, throwing a fit about advertising in products. This discussion has gone from “fuck that guy” — overlooking that almost every employer represented here has one and the larger employers have entire divisions of them — to “capitalism is bad” in three messages. That’s impressive. It’s almost as if the root cause of why these business models are ho…

"Samsung learned from the industry represented here"

Not everyone on HN works in adtech, and very likely none of the people in this thread do either.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#327

Post by lsaferite »

chongli wrote: post #237
tangjurine wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're in the middle of transitioning from making decisions based on pure intuition to being purely logical and data-driven... I wonder if that's such a good idea. There was this article a while back I read that talked about how native peoples made poisonous foods edible. Some processes were extremely convoluted and unreasonable, but it worked, and efforts by a "reasonable" man to make the process more efficient would…

Was this the essay you were referring to [1]? I think you’re bang on with this comparison. My dad and I have long complained how (for example) grocery stores seem to constantly cancel our favourite products. We know it’s not the manufacturer because the product is still on their website. My dad and I even have a term for the people in the head office who make the decision to phase out our favourite products: spreadsh…

Number driven vs. people driven is how I usually delineate these things. I find myself strongly in the people driven camp and dealing with purely numbers driven people is highly frustrating.

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#328

Post by fxtentacle »

ckastner wrote: post #166
fxtentacle wrote: post #84

... and that's exactly why my TV will never have an internet connection. By now, it doesn't really matter which brand you use. I have analyzed Samsung, Sony, LG and Philips and ALL of them send data about your usage to NetEase in China and ALL of them have ToS that say that they might record your voice and store it for improving their AI or whatever. Plus all of them shove suggested apps in your face, so I'd say it i…

> I have analyzed Samsung, Sony, LG and Philips and ALL of them send data I always suspected something like this, but never went through the effort of checking. Did you by chance document and publish your analysis somewhere? If they do this with TV sets sold in the EU, then unless they offer some opt-out mechanism (actually, opt-IN, but whatever) directly on the TV set, this is a blatant GDPR violation.

I checked the German models. And yes, it is a GDPR violation. Plus it makes the integrated 4k movie player stutter because the CPU use from the adware causes thermal throttling on the GPU. That's why I investigated in the first place...

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#329

Post by sschueller »

TooCreative wrote: post #239
sschueller wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had to blacklist my wifi controlled air purifier on my router as it was sending data every few seconds to Amazon's DCs. If they want to collect air quality stats from my location they should pay me for that data.

Blacklist? How did it get the password to your router in the first place?

pfSense

Re: Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

#330

Post by paulcole »

Nextgrid wrote: post #211
avian wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some stupid meeting somewhere: A: ...and in conclusion, it's a win-win situation. Users will benefit from ads and our revenue will go up. B: People don't like ads on their TV. A: But they do. I refer you to slides 18 through 25 where you can see engagement metrics for our ad rollout on the old model. If people wouldn't like ads they wouldn't be clicking on them so much . B: I don't like ads. Do you like ads on you…

I suspect that a large part of this ad- and marketing-driven economy is based on this. The reason they predict their revenue will go up (which it will, at least in the short term until the market adjusts) is because they have a lot of customers already lined up to pay them to show ads on their TVs. Those customers' marketing departments decided to pay money to include their ads on TVs because a similar process was fo…

> looking at the companies who buy Google AdWords on their own brand - if someone's searching for your brand on Google your website will already be the top result - a click on the ad is not a true "conversion" in this case and is just wasted money

There are a few good reasons to do this:

1. Competitors will bid on your brand name. Your ad for your own brand name will have a higher quality score and be very cheap, driving up the price for the competitors.

2. So much of a SERP is below the fold that there is value to being as close to the top of the page as possible.

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