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Comment by embedding-shape

21 hours ago

So because the US is the largest consumer market in the world, the TVs LG sell in the US has more ads in the UIs than TVs sold in Europe? Why would it be like that? If that theory is true, does that mean TVs sold in the European Union then have more ads than TVs sold in China, as the EU consumer market is larger than the China one?

> Why would it be like that?

Ads aren't free - this isn't a "theory," it's basic economics. Cost can be political (you cause the entire EU government to outlaw the practice) or monetary.

> If that theory is true, does that mean TVs sold in the European Union then have more ads than TVs sold in China

Probably? The markets have little overlap, but again, this is a function of cost. Where people have more money to spend, I have more money to spend on ads, or more money to spend on campaigning to be allowed to show ads.

  • > Probably?

    Spoiler: LG TVs sold in China also seem to have more ads than the LG TV we end up buying in Europe. Seemingly (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48957229) with Samsung it's the same. Even though EU is a larger consumer market than China, so obviously your theory doesn't hold, it's something else than "Bigger consumer markets === more ads in UIs in TVs".

    • > obviously your theory doesn't hold

      Cost is my "theory." A larger market can sustain larger ad spend, and in some areas it's cheaper to make larger ad buys. Both are true.

      Also, "larger market" obviously implies a category-specific qualifier. People in the United States might have more of an appetite for televisions than people without running water - news at 11.

      > Spoiler: LG TVs sold in China also seem to have more ads than the LG TV we end up buying in Europe.

      "Spoiler:" is an unnecessarily cunty way to lead a declaration of fact with zero objective accompanying evidence. Any citation you care to provide?

      "More ads" is already a pretty subjective, ill-defined thing. More screen time? More individual advertisers? More unique advertisements? Larger screen area?

      3 replies →

  • Living in China, in my experience there are more ads than anywhere else I have been. My TV’s homescreen is just ads, every app has constant ads after each action there is basically a popup. There are even more ‘grey area’ ads, my whole scooter and door is plastered with the same ad for borrowing money, just different color and number, but literally 40 around my front door. On the rolling shutters of stores there are hundreds of stickers offering shutter maintenance services (lol). Its fairly insane, but the overload also makes it interesting

Europe has strong GDPR regulations. As for China, I've heard that hardware margins are low, so the hardware itself is just bait, and they embed ads in the software inside. But this is just something I heard from another Korean programmer, so it's not really a serious claim