Ads Are Playing Even When TVs Are Off, Wasting $1 Billion/Year

Who doesn’t hate advertisements? And people have a fairly good reason to dislike them too. They disturb your favorite shows and music, and won’t even let you surf the internet in peace!

Some of us get so annoyed with consistent and repetitive ads we turn the television off in exasperation, thinking they will no longer affect us. Well, you might want to think about that again! According to new research, ads play even when your smart TV is turned off!

As per a WSJ report, GroupM and iSpot conducted the study on 20 million Vizio smart TVs for six months, and they are partnering up for another measurement phase.

Ads play even when your Smart TV is off

Around 17% of TV ads connected to dongles, consoles, streaming sticks, and boxes keep playing even if your device is powered off. If that sounds malicious, it is anything but that and is more of a technical fault.

When you switch off your television, it should signal the streaming device through the HDMI port to cut everything off, but it does not always do that, and the content keeps playing, which leads to brands wasting $1 billion annually.

That is unless you pause the app or exit it before turning your TV off, meaning that if you leave the streaming service on, advertisements will continue to play.

Executive director of investment strategy for GroupM US, Adam Gerber, said that there are differences in the rate of continuous play, which is influenced by publisher app in use, streaming device, and combination on TV set model.

However, if you own a smart TV with pre-installed streaming apps, such incidents do not occur. There is ‘no evidence of the same problem on smart TV applications, and the issue lies within connected devices.

Billions in losses for advertisers

Advertisers spend a lot of money on streaming channels every day, meaning that although sources claim that between $1.5 to $1.9 billion worth of ads are shown to people who can’t see them, there is a solid chance that the number is even higher.

As promoters continue to pour millions every year into streaming and connected services, they can rarely track where their money ends up. While individual firms have come up with solutions, with billions at stake, rigid and proper solutions are necessary.