Roku is rolling out a revamped homescreen for its smart TV operating system to American users, and it means that ads disguised as content recommendations now take up around two thirds of the screen’s real estate when it's first started up.
Despite facing fierce competition from rivals like Google TV, Amazon’s Fire TV, Apple’s tvOS, LG’s webOS and Samsung’s Tizen, Roku is still one of the world’s most popular smart TV operating systems, thanks to its incredibly strong presence in North America. It’s a lot less popular in other regions, though.
According to Roku, its software is present in more than 100 million households worldwide, with the bulk of those being resident in America. It’s them who are seeing what is a major UI overhaul first. The company said the update is the biggest it has implemented in over a decade. The refreshed look was apparently shaped by its user’s behavioral insights and by what it has been told directly by consumers. “The new Roku Home Screen, soon reaching over 100 million streaming households, is more personal and streamlined,” it said in a blog post.
Roku’s ads appear as “recommendations” in a new Top Picks for You section of the homepage that takes up a good third of the screen. According to the company, every user will see different recommendations that are “shaped around you and what we think you’ll be interested in.”
Likely, what users will see is a combination of personalised content recommendations and also a number of targeted ads and sponsored placements from its partners that it hopes might interest them.
This increased focus on recommendations isn’t surprising, because Roku’s business model is exclusively about ads, and there’s another ad slot to the right of the categories that takes up another third of the home screen, displaying a single, recommended title. Because the Top Picks for You section appears at the top of its various categories, it means that roughly 66% of the homescreen is now basically ads, at least until users start scrolling down through the list of sections.
Roku is one of the smart TV operating system providers at the forefront of pushing yet more ads, but it isn’t alone in doing so.
Last week, AFTVnews reported that Amazon updated its Fire TV interface so that when users switch their TVs or streaming sticks on, the first thing they’ll see is a system pop-up, which blocks almost the entire home screen. It’s especially annoying because it will remain on the page, blocking the menus, until the user picks up the remote control and closes it manually. For now, the pop-up only appears to display a single ad for the company’s Fire TV mobile app, but it seems like it’s only a matter of time until other ads appear there.
It’s an ominous move because Fire TV already has ads splattered all over the place. For instance, they pop up when the TV is left on standby, and they also appear throughout the home screen sections.
For now, neither Roku nor Fire TV displays actual ads for unrelated products such as trainers or life insurance, but it does feel as if OS makers are trending in that direction. It’s worth pointing out that Apple’s tvOS still doesn’t show any ads at all, but unless you buy an Apple TV 4K box, you will be targeted.
