Samsung’s refrigerator ads revealed #Vergecast

Samsung is now displaying full-screen, rotating advertisements on its smart refrigerator screens, which can only be disabled by turning off the entire 'widget' functionality.

• Samsung smart refrigerators now display rotating full-screen ads for products like water filters.

• Disabling these ads removes other useful screen features like news and calendar.

• Introducing ads on existing, already purchased smart appliances is considered a 'bait and switch'.

Samsung's smart refrigerators now feature rotating full-screen advertisements for products like water filters, appearing every 40 seconds as part of a four-item widget. Users can disable these ads, but doing so also removes other useful features like news and calendar. This practice is criticized as a 'bait and switch' given that these appliances were purchased without prior advertising, similar to recent ad implementations on Amazon Echo devices.

Samsung Refrigerator Ads

• 00:00:00 Samsung has begun displaying 'curated advertisements' on its smart refrigerator screens, which appear as a large widget taking up about one-fifth of the screen. This ad rotates every 10 seconds with three other content types (news, calendar, weather), meaning the advertisement appears every 40 seconds. While the ad widget can be disabled through settings, this action removes all other features from the rotating widget, presenting an 'all or nothing' choice for users.

The 'Bait and Switch'

• 00:01:07 The introduction of ads on previously purchased smart appliances, such as Samsung refrigerators and Amazon Echo devices, is seen as an outrageous 'bait and switch' by consumers. This differs from models where ads are disclosed at the point of purchase for a cheaper price, or where users opt into ads. The concern is that companies like Samsung leverage the essential, difficult-to-replace nature of appliances to introduce unwanted features after purchase, holding users captive to these changes.