Telly Inc., the company that launched amid big fanfare in May 2023 with the promise of giving consumers a shiny new LCD TV for free so long as they agree to be bombarded with ads, is struggling to convince consumers of the merits of its giveaway, according to a new report.
The company had reportedly hoped to ship as many as 500,000 free TVs to Americans within the first year of its launch, followed by “millions” in the second year. It seemed to get off to a promising start, claiming to have secured 250,000 pre-orders within its first week of launching.
But by the end of 2025, the company had only managed to ship 35,000 “Tellys” to American homes, falling far short of its initial targets.
That's according to Lowpass, which originally reported on Telly’s grand scheme. It claims to have obtained the numbers from a leaked investor presentation.
Telly offered what looked to be a pretty sweet deal. Basically, it would give anyone who agreed to its terms and services a free 55-inch LCD TV with a 4K resolution display, an integrated soundbar, a camera and a microphone, plus a “second screen” that sits below, displaying a combination of widgets and non-stop ads. The downside is that it collects vast amounts of data about what users are watching in order to fuel its ad algorithms.
The startup was optimistic that millions of consumers would be willing to agree to such terms, but its plans seem to have come unstuck due to a number of problems. For one thing, it’s apparently struggling to find a reliable shipping partner. According to the leaked presentation, an alarming 10% of all Telly TVs it shipped out were broken by the time they arrived at the customer’s home. The company has also had trouble obtaining the funding it needs to be able to manufacture the TVs, and we’d imagine this is the bigger problem, as it explains why it’s seeking more investors.
In addition, the company seemingly admits that a growing number of consumers are somewhat disturbed by its business model. Its Tellys are equipped with Automatic Content Recognition software that takes a screenshot of everything the user is watching, every few seconds, which is of course, extremely invasive. Consumers don’t like this, as illustrated by the fact that five TV brands were recently slapped with a lawsuit over the practice.
It appears that one of the only things Telly has going for it is that its model does appear to generate more ad revenue than others. In the third quarter of 2025, Telly said its TVs raked in an average of $50 in ad sales. That’s much more than ad-heavy competitors such as Roku, which generated ad revenue of $41.49 per TV, per year, on average, in 2025. Roku’s business model is different though, because consumers are still required to pay for its TVs and streaming sticks, even though the company makes very little revenue from this. Roku’s TVs also lack the second screen.
Despite being an ad revenue machine, Telly’s free TV giveaway has clearly not been nearly as successful as first hoped. However, the company is not giving up just yet, and reportedly has plans to ramp up deliveries after ordering another 100,000 televisions from its supplier, Foxconn.
