Ryan Haines / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Google TV continues to evolve its user interface with new sections to display information.
- One of those recent additions has now been co-opted to also show advertising.
Google TV is a great platform for accessing all our favorite streaming services, with an interface that’s ideal for navigation from the couch. But it’s also far from perfect, and long-time users will definitely have a personal list of a few changes they’d love to see Google get around to making. One of the more controversial and widely derided efforts Google has made with its living room interface has been its growing embrace of prominent advertising. That’s only continuing now, as Google finds yet another way to push ads through Google TV.
It feels like Google’s really been trying to cook up new ways to use Google TV to sell us stuff, like those impossible-to-ignore QR code ads that we saw arrive last month. But more than that, it’s been playing with the system’s interface and trying out new places to display information. One of those is exactly where we saw Google promoting its new Advisors program earlier this month, in a row that shows up below your Continue Watching section.
Mishaal Rahman / Android Authority
Of course, this being Google TV, it was probably only going to be a matter of time before that very same space was repurposed for advertising. And that’s exactly what the team at 9to5Google has spotted happening as part of the big marketing push surrounding the release of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.
Mind you, this is only the latest place that Indy ads have been surfacing on Google TV, but with them spreading to this new section, we’re seeing what’s probably the most expansive advertising campaign to show its face on the platform to date. And considering the kind of momentum that Google has with stuff like this, you can almost guarantee that we’ll be seeing a lot more of this heavy-handed approach across Google TV advertising in the future.
Is this starting to get to the point where it’s just too much for you? Have Google TV ads become intolerable to the point that you’re tempted to just drop the whole platform, yearning for the days of dumb TV? We’ve been there, too. Let’s commiserate (and maybe share tips for alternatives) down in the comments.
