Following an announcement earlier this year that more ads are headed to your Roku TV and streaming stick’s home screen, Roku CEO Anthony Wood has reaffirmed those plans, saying in the company’s recent Q1 2024 earnings call that the first video ads will be arriving soon.
As Wood explains, the video ads will replace the TV OS home page’s previously static marquee ad (via The Streamable), with the CEO adding that Roku is currently testing “other types of video ad units” as part of its efforts to launch even more adverts on the Roku OS home screen.
This follows similar advertisement changes for Amazon’s Fire OS, which has started to launch a variety of advertisements to the home screen and search results. And while Amazon and Roku execs have argued that these adverts won’t negatively impact the user experience, I wholeheartedly disagree – as will many other users who have taken to social media to complain.
I'm done with ads
Roku and Fire OS aren’t the only services in the world of streaming that are upping the ads. Netflix launched an ad-supported tier that’s surprisingly successful, and Disney Plus has followed suit with its own tier with ads. YouTube has been cracking down on ad-blockers while simultaneously shoving more, longer, and unskippable adverts into videos in an effort to make Premium look more appealing, and Prime Video has added adverts into its shows unless you pay extra.
While in some instances this has proven to be successful – speaking anecdotally I now pay extra for Netflix and Disney Plus to avoid ads, and I’m contemplating buying YouTube Premium – the worsening services coupled with rising prices and the overflowing well of content platforms has pushed me away too.
I recently resubscribed to Prime Video to binge Fallout (it’s fantastic, by the way) and catch up on a few shows and films I’ve missed from the past year or so, such as Invincible and Anatomy of a Fall. For a time I considered letting my subscription stick around, but after sitting through umpteen ad breaks per Invincible episode I’ve decided to dip – keeping my Prime Video affair capped at just one month – as the watching experience was awful.
Similarly these Fire OS and now Roku changes will make me think twice before buying a TV that runs on these operating systems – when previously I wouldn’t have cared all that much what OS it runs on.
Unfortunately I feel I might be facing a losing battle. I expect it won’t be long before other TV operating systems follow Roku and Fire OS’s leads with an advert bombardment as we continue this growing trend of ‘enshittification’ – which sees our favorite services degrade now that people are locked in.
Widespread pushback might see us avoid this fate – and I seriously hope we do – but I’m not optimistic that a future with fewer ads is headed our way, quite the opposite.
