TV advertising dystopia – LG turns screensavers into ad space

Just when I thought the era of streaming might cause TV advertising to slowly die out, LG has come up with a grand idea:

to replace the standard screensaver with advertising.

Yep, you read that right. LG’s screensaver – usually an elegant, calming black with small pixel fireworks – is to be replaced by gaudy ads. And not only in LG’s own services and products, but also in goods and services from other companies. The South Korean TV manufacturer explained as much in a press release. Native Screensaver Ads, a full-screen advertising experience.

Great. Just great.

Screensaver, as in saving your screen? Not with LG!

Sarcasm aside, as the owner of an OLED TV, I first and foremost consider screensavers to be, well, savers of screens. OLED panels are known for their vivid colours, contrast and black levels, but this comes at a cost: used incorrectly, they’re susceptible to burn-in.

In other words, screensavers aren’t just a fun visual gimmick. They also serve as a kind of life insurance for the pixels of an expensive OLED TV. But LG apparently sees things differently. According to the press release, LG views screensaver time as perceived downtime that could actually be put to better use. Namely, for advertising!

The idea: when you take a break from actively watching TV, instead of launching a screensaver that goes easy on your eyes and screen, LG will be hitting you full force with ads. What’s the reasoning behind this decision? Well, according to LG’s press release, most people don’t really watch TV any more. Instead, they multitask – play games on their phone, shop online or scroll through Instagram. This is confirmed by a market study. LG clearly thought it might as well take advantage of our mental absence to push even more advertising on us.

But wait, it gets worse: the images released so far suggest we’ll be getting static ads.

And this is precisely the problem. Static images and OLED TVs don’t go well together. Imagine your TV goes to the trouble of showing a brightly coloured LG ad for several hours while you’re busy on your phone. Your TV will – quite literally – burn «LG forever» into its memory. The lack of movement and changing colours increases the risk of your TV screen eventually looking like a broken advertising poster that’s been exposed to the blazing sun for the last six months.

But hey, that’s the price we must pay for a «full-screen advertising experience»! And when LG calls it an «experience», it seemingly means business. In the press release, it almost sounds as if on-screen advertising is a new high-end feature that we’ve been missing out on in premium TVs. I just wonder how many of us have really been waiting to turn our TV into a flashing display ad with an even higher power consumption.

You can switch it off, but…

LG has yet to reveal which Smart TV models will feature this new form of advertising, to what extent, and how long the presumably static adverts will be displayed. It also remains unclear in which countries advertising space for the screensaver ads has already been sold. I could be getting all worked up for nothing here.

The only thing that is clear is that on TVs that support screensaver ads, the option has already been automatically activated in an update. If you want to know whether your TV is affected, you can check in the settings – and, fortunately, also put a stop to the ad flood. LG seems to have retained at least an ounce of common sense.

To switch off screensaver ads, click on the settings cogwheel on your LG TV. Go to General, then Additional Settings. There, you’ll find an option called Screen Saver Promotion. Switch it off to stop ads from being displayed. Importantly, this will not deactivate the actual screensaver, just the ads.

It’s no coincidence that the deactivation option is hidden so deeply in the convoluted menu structures that you practically need to be Indiana Jones to uncover it. And the fact that screensaver advertising is automatically activated without informing customers is also a bad look.

Marketing madness hits TV users

A device that was once considered an elegant piece of technology is suddenly becoming an advertising platform that hijacks our idle time. Lovely, just what we needed.

Sure, LG claims that screensaver ads increase brand awareness by a factor of 2.5. But honestly, who asked for that? Certainly, no customer switches on their TV in the hopes to be bombarded by advertising – least of all when the TV is supposed to be on sleep. Maybe we should all go back to good ole tube TVs. At least those are safe from screensaver ads.