Future Roku TVs may inject tailored ads into anything and everything when you pause
- Reference: 1713377708
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/04/17/roku_tv_ad_patent/
- Source link:
A Roku-assigned [1]patent application , filed in the US as 20230388589A1 and titled "HDMI customized ad insertion," outlines a fairly convoluted system that ultimately shows adverts on your telly or some other display whenever some kind of pause in playback is detected.
The proposed patent, published at the end of last year and spotted now, describes a display device that can show advertising after identifying a pause in the video content from an HDMI-connected media device.
[2]
Crucially, it says the display and media hardware can be the same device, ie: a smart TV like that from Roku. There are two ways of looking at this design: A way for standalone televisions, monitors, and projectors to show their own ads during a pause, and a way for integrated smart displays to do the same.
[3]
[4]
This would presumably also mean ads can run in the middle of a gaming session or a video being played via a PC, if the monitor or TV in use were to adopt this tech.
Roku even helpfully attached a flow chart to the patent application that outlines all the cases where an ad would be played. These include not only the detection of a pause button press but also instances where the TV infers a pause from various criteria.
[5]
These criteria include checking whether new frames are being created, if there's any audio, and even if a pause symbol is on the screen. In those instances, the TV or display will then begin serving an ad that goes right on top of whatever is on the screen.
The patent does not specify whether these ads will be in the form of still images, audio, or video, though Roku does detail that they will be served based on whatever content is playing on the screen. The patent details lots of ways it will analyze content to determine what ad to show, such as video metadata, watermarks, and the audio. Checking the source device and even the software application running are options too, perhaps coming in handy when the device in question is a gaming console or some other purpose-made device with a specific name.
[6]Roku makes 2FA mandatory for all after nearly 600K accounts pwned
[7]Lawsuit claims Meta hobbled Facebook Watch to help Netflix
[8]Dumping us into ad tier of Prime Video when we paid for ad-free is 'unfair' – lawsuit
[9]Netflix to crack down on account sharing, offer ad-laden cheaper options
The draft patent never mentions artificial intelligence when discussing content recognition, so its detection may be pretty rudimentary. However, since the TV likely has to communicate with some outside server to get the ad, any AI-powered part of the process may be done in the cloud away from this design seeking patent protection.
While this kind of ad injection isn't something that currently happens with smart TVs, it's technically already possible. Back in 2015, Samsung accidentally set its Australian TVs to play [10]muted Pepsi commercials over and over on top of movies played through Plex Media Server. Although the ads were clearly a bug, it does indicate that Samsung was working on something similar to what is outlined in the Roku patent.
Of course, this is all at the patent application stage, it may never happened, and plenty of patents never make it to actual products. We've asked Roku to comment on whether the feature could become reality. ®
Updated to add
Spokespeople for Roku have been in touch to assure us it has no plans right now to commercialize a design it went to all the effort of patenting.
“This is not an issued patent and there are no plans to put the HDMI ad insertion feature into our products at this time," the spinners told us.
[11]
"Like the patents of many other technology companies, Roku patent applications often describe technologies explored by teams at Roku and many of these technologies do not become part of the products we sell.”
Get our [12]Tech Resources
[1] https://patents.google.com/patent/US20230388589A1/en
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZiBGeaJmZXS48Gx63GWAUQAAAAY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZiBGeaJmZXS48Gx63GWAUQAAAAY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZiBGeaJmZXS48Gx63GWAUQAAAAY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZiBGeaJmZXS48Gx63GWAUQAAAAY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/15/roku_2fa_for_everyone/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/02/meta_facebook_watch_netflix/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/14/amazon_prime_vid_suit/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/20/netflix_account_sharing_crackdown/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2015/02/11/samsung_fixes_advert_interruption_problem/
[11] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZiBGeaJmZXS48Gx63GWAUQAAAAY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[12] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
What an excellent way to persuade people to
NEVER BUY ANOTHER OF YOUR IMBECILIC BRAINDEAD PRODUCTS.
(Louis Rossmann has an excellent rant on this from a week or so ago).
Do you mean the company who.....
Had a massive data breach recently and tried to hide it?
Tried to force users into a 'forced arbitration' agreement by disabling the functionality of it's products until you agreed, with no way to opt out unless you reset your system to factory specs and never ever connected it to the internet again.... rendering a smart system a dumb one without access to any of the streaming services you actually purchased the product for.... and they did this completely coincidently right before they had to announce the data breach.
The same company that has now filed this patent to inject ads into pauses of content you have paid for to have an ad free experience.
Fuck roku.... no... fuck the entire ad industry. You are now morally and ethically justified in going to any extremes to block and thwart any and all ads and data harvesting. I just want this entire toxic industry to wither and die. I'd be willing to pay a little extra for content... But I'm not willing to pay for content that promises an ad free experience only to bait and switch you into being forced to watch them or conned into paying extra to remove them again... Fuck roku, fuck amazon... fuck them all.
Re: Do you mean the company who.....
>> I'd be willing to pay a little extra for content
I was willing to pay, but that was not enough for Netflix with their heel turn on account sharing, nor to Amazon with their ads on Prime, nor to Youtube with their everything really...
So far Spotify is the only one behaving decently enough[1] for me to keep a subscription.
[1] From the point of view of an user. Their interaction with artists is a whole different can of worms
Not a fan
This is why I tend to pay more for premium products like the Shield. The hardware Roku sells is a loss leader and they make up the difference selling data about the habits of people using their stuff. The SoCs alone probably cost more than what they sell some of those low end devices for.
Re: Not a fan
Couldn't agree with this more... I have 2 nVidia Shield TV devices, a 2017 and 2019 pro models. One I use in my bedroom connected to a 50" samsung 4K tv... that isn't connected to the internet in anyway.
I have a burner google account I use for the shield... a vpn installed and only a few apps as well as a 3rd part app store. It's used for netflix, kodi and emby... and that's it. I got rid of prime in Jan.
The 2nd shield device, is kept for when I go away, I take it with me... either to watch netflix where I'm staying, or with kodi and a 1tb ssd connected that I fill with movies/tv shows to consume if needed.
At home, I also have a freesat box after getting rid of sky about 7-8yrs ago... Last weekend, I had to replace the 500GB HDD in it, with a 1TB SSD after it failed.
Whether Roku implements this on their TVs or not, if the patent is granted - which if its been filed in the US patent office it probably will be considering previous patents they have allowed. Then some company is bound to consider licensing it from Roku to implement in their own TVs so either way Roku will be making money from it.
Yet another reason to leave your smart TV's unconnected from the network. As if i am watching some 'adult' content from a device hooked up via HDMI, i don't want my TV analyzing what im watching and sending it off to their ad servers to show me targeted ads based on what im watching in private.
On the plus side
The only time I ever have something I am watching on pause is when I am away from my TV, no longer watching it, am taking a piss or shit, making a cup of tea, or stirring a pan on the stove. For me it will be as pointless and as ineffective as all the other ads I never get to see.
I still hate the idea though. We will have to hope they thought this was a good idea for a patent, not a good idea to implement.
And I say that as someone who is quite proud of having developed 'video present' detection for a video auto-selector which switched to usually off equipment when powered on, and back when switched off again.
That was intended to be a convenience for the user. And, importantly, the user could disable that functionality.
Simple...don't have one
I pitched my Roku years go when I realized how chatty it was with the mothership. 24x7 outbound traffic. Although I am guessing this patent applies to 'Smart' TV's with built-in Roku players, as this is the only way they can sense a paused video from a different HDMI source.
I would suggest simply not connecting such a device to the Internet, but I'll bet it will either have built-in permanent ads or will require network access before working (sort of like how HP printers won't turn on their USB port until they are WiFi connected).
What incredibly stoopid way to kill a good product.
Here we go again.
A comment I saw earlier, originally intended as a response to Microsoft's suggestion of putting ads on the Windows 11 start menu. Seems somehow appropriate here as well:
Dear ad-slingers.
Fuck off.
Keep fucking off until you come to a gate bearing a sign, 'You Cannot Fuck Off Past This Point'.
Ignore the sign, open the gate, dream the impossible dream, and keep fucking off forever.
Yours with the most extreme prejudice imaginable, and then some.
By the way, if anyone here is in advertising or marketing...
This sort of thing increasingly reminds me of the late Bill Hicks' comments on people who work in advertising and marketing.
"Smart" televisions were a mistake.
Let's put it straight once for all...
Considering the state of our ecosystem, advertising is a crime against humanity. Full-stop.
The Future is Now!
My Roku stick already does that; you hit pause on any one of the apps being serviced by Roku, and a silent, still ad (or promo) pops up on the screen. Now, it is not clear whether that is coming from Roku or from the actual streaming app I'm running via the stick, although since the format of these ads is different (full screen, half screen, half screen with alpha channel gradient to allow you to see the actual paused source underneath) would lend one to believe that the app itself is foisting the ad upon us wearied viewers.
Now if this is indeed the case, and Roku starts overwriting the app's ads with its own, I'm not real sure that the app folks are going to take too kindly to Roku usurping their ha'pennies in revenue.
This could get interesting. Do I smell popcorn?
Getting dangerously close to losing me... The Roku tv OS has started to drag with all the forced ads and theme changes, and who knows what other telemetry is going on in the background that wasn't there years ago
Yeah, no.
They can f**k right off on this one.