Roku TV on wall in living room setting
(Image credit: Roku)
Roku is testing ads that appear on startup
Users say the sound is on and some can't be skipped
Roku is keen to add more advertising to its platform
Some Roku owners are promising that "my Roku devices will be in the trash" if it goes ahead with its latest ad-serving idea: showing you an ad before you get to the home screen.
Disgruntled users are turning to online forums to describe what's going on and to express their displeasure. As one poster to r/Roku explained, "I just turned on my Roku and got an unskippable ad for a movie before I got to the regular Roku homescreen." Other Redditors confirmed that they too were getting the ads (via Ars Technica).
The ad that's causing concern was for Moana 2 (which just launched on Disney+) which users say auto-played with sound on when the Roku device was started up.
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Roku has confirmed that this is no accident, but it's not necessarily a permanent addition.
An animated girl holds up a paddle with a whale behind her
Roku users are having a, ahem, moan-a about unwanted ads.(Image credit: Disney)
Attack of the unwanted ads
As Ars Technica reports, Roku has confirmed that the auto-playing adverts are supposed to be there as part of an experiment. Roku "has and will always require continuous testing and innovation across design, navigation, content, and our first-rate advertising products."
According to Roku, sticking an intrusive ad before the home screen is part of "providing a delightful and simple user experience." But from what I've seen online, users are far from delighted: for some this is a step too far on an already ad-heavy platform. And Roku could go further: as we've reported a few times, Roku's vision for the future of television is more sell-o-vision.
Roku isn't alone here, of course. The razor-thin profit margins when selling even the best TVs mean that many manufacturers see advertising and user data as absolutely vital ways of generating money in an increasingly competitive market.
But Roku does appear to be particularly aggressive about advertising, and it's at the stage of upsetting some customers who feel that the platform is degrading a product they've already paid for. As one Roku owner put it in r/Roku: "Why does everything have to start sucking so much?"
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Contributor
Writer, broadcaster, musician and kitchen gadget obsessive Carrie Marshall has been writing about tech since 1998, contributing sage advice and odd opinions to all kinds of magazines and websites as well as writing more than a dozen books. Her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, is on sale now and her next book, about pop music, is out in 2025. She is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind.