Enlarge / A closeup of the webcam on the Displace TV announced in January. (credit: Dislace)

It's no secret that TV makers are seriously invested in pushing ads. Using TVs for advertising goes back to 1941 , when the first TV commercial aired. But as we trudge our way through the 21st century, TV vendors are becoming more involved in ensuring that their hardware is used to sell stuff and add to their own recurring revenue.

This has taken various forms, but in some cases we're seeing increasingly invasive strategies for turning TVs into a primary place for shopping. The latest approach catching attention comes from startup Displace. Its upcoming TVs will use integrated webcams and NFC payment readers to make it easy for people to buy stuff they see on TV.

Displace hasn't officially released a product yet, so skepticism about the TVs it says it will demo at CES 2024 in Las Vegas next month, as spotted by sites like Wifi Hifi , is warranted. (Displace said it would have images of the newly announced TVs to share next year). The startup is specializing in wireless TVs with hot-swappable batteries that can vacuum suction-mount to a wall and zip-line slowly off said wall when sensing an unstable connection or low battery. The original "Displace TV" that Displace announced in January is supposed to ship in mid-2024. Displace has been taking preorders for those.

Enlarge (credit: Getty )

We've all experienced it or heard about it happening: Someone has a conversation about wanting a red jacket, and then suddenly, it seems like they're seeing ads for red jackets all over the place.

Makers of microphone-equipped electronics sometimes admit to selling voice data to third parties (advertisers). But that's usually voice data accumulated after a user has prompted their device to start listening to them and after they've opted into (preferably not by default) this sort of data collection.

But a marketing company called CMG Local Solutions sparked panic recently by alluding that it has access to people's private conversations by tapping into data gathered by the microphones on their phones, TVs, and other personal electronics, as first reported by 404 Media on Thursday. The marketing firm had said it uses these personal conversations for ad targeting.

Enlarge / A non-Amazon TV displaying a fire. (credit: Getty )

People who buy a Fire TV from Amazon are probably looking for a cheap and simple way to get an affordable 4K smart TV. When Amazon announced its first self-branded TVs in September 2021, it touted them as being a "great value." But owners of the devices will soon be paying for some of those savings in the form of more prominently displayed advertisements.

Charlotte Maines, Amazon's director of Fire TV advertising, monetization, and engagement, detailed the new types of ads that Amazon is selling on Fire TVs. In a StreamTV Insider report from November 1, Amazon said the new ads will allow advertisers to reach an average of 155 million unique monthly viewers.

Some of the changes targeting advertisers, like connecting display placement ads with specific in-stream video ads, seem harmless enough. Others could jeopardize the TV-watching experience for owners.

Enlarge / Angry bird is angry. (credit: Rovio)

Back in the days before practically every mobile game was a free-to-play, ad- and microtransaction-laden sinkhole, Rovio found years of viral success selling paid downloads of Angry Birds to tens of millions of smartphone users . Today, though, the company is delisting the last "pay upfront" version of the game from mobile app stores because of what it says is a "negative impact" on the more lucrative free-to-play titles in the franchise.

Years after its 2009 launch, the original Angry Birds was first pulled from mobile app stores in 2019, a move Rovio later blamed on "outdated game engines and design." The remastered "Rovio Classics" version of the original game launched last year , asking 99 cents for over 390 ad-free levels, complete with updated graphics and a new, future-proofed engine "built from the ground up in Unity."

In a tweeted statement earlier this week , though, Rovio announced that it is delisting Rovio Classics: Angry Birds from the Google Play Store and renaming the game Red's First Flight on the iOS App Store (presumably to make it less findable in an "Angry Birds" search). That's because of the game's "impact on our wider games portfolio," Rovio said, including "live" titles such as Angry Birds 2 , Angry Birds Friends , and Angry Birds Journey .

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