Thanks to a patent, the corporation might provide advertisements to you even while your third-party device is halted.
Roku already distributes advertisements through its platform, but it appears that the company is now investigating the possibility of displaying advertisements to you while you are using third-party devices that are connected to its televisions. A new patent application that was discovered by Lowpass indicates that the firm intends to produce a system or method “for ad insertion by a display device coupled to a media device via a high-definition media interface (HDMI) connection.” This information describes the company’s intention to create a system or method. This indicates that the corporation would still be able to display you adverts even if you linked a different streaming device or console to a Roku TV through HDMI. For example, you could connect an Apple TV, a Chromecast, or a PlayStation to any of these devices.
Specifically, Roku is considering the possibility of displaying advertisements to you when you are pausing whatever you are watching or playing on the third-party device that is tied to it. It described several methods in its patent that it can use to determine whether the show or game that is being displayed on the screen is paused. These methods include receiving a pause signal from the remote control, detecting a pause icon, looking at several video frames and determining that the image that is being displayed has not changed for some time, and receiving a silent audio signal from the HDMI connection.
In the event that it functions as intended, the advertisements will not have a significant impact on your viewing or playing experience, provided that you are actually walking away or engaging in something else in the meanwhile. Even though you would undoubtedly prefer such experiences to be completely devoid of advertisements, Roku is at least making an effort to ensure that it is giving you advertisements that are relevant to your interests. Through the utilization of automated content recognition (ACR) technology, it is able to analyze frozen video or audio frames and determine what is displayed on the screen. Alternatively, it might perform an analysis of the metadata in order to display advertisements that are relevant to the content that you are currently playing or watching. It is also possible that it will offer advertisements based on the third-party device that is connected to your television.
Lowpass makes the observation that the corporation might have conceived of the idea due to the fact that manufacturers normally do not generate a significant amount of money from the sale of hardware. In the fiscal year 2023, Roku incurred a loss of $44 million due to the sale of smart TVs. In a similar vein, the visual display and digital appliances segment of Samsung reported operating losses of $37.5 million for the fourth quarter of the previous year. Roku, on the other hand, came in a profit of $1.6 billion thanks to advertisements and services. Providing that the possibility of watching advertising while your show or game is paused does not dissuade you from purchasing Roku TV, this notion has the potential to bring in additional revenue for the aforementioned company. However, at this point in time, this is merely a patent, and it is very possible that Roku will decide to abandon it and not go ahead with its implementation at all.