LG turns OLED TVs into billboards because you’re busy playing on your phone

LG is beginning to display screensaver ads to owners of its televisions, even those who’ve splashed out on its notoriously expensive OLED sets.

FlatpanelsHD reports that 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.”

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 a blog post on 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.