- Amazon Fire OS devices such as Fire TV and Fire TV Sticks have recently begun showing fullscreen auto-playing ads simply upon switching on the TV.
- These ads begin playing without any user interaction beyond booting the TV.
- Users can turn off these ads by going to Settings > Preferences > Featured Content and disabling Allow Video Autoplay and Allow Audio Autoplay.
Most of us use a smart TV these days, primarily to stream new TV shows and movies. There is a lot of focus on content discovery on a smart TV user interface, as what is shown to the user in the first minute likely dictates what most of us would watch for the next hour. But organic content is slowly being replaced by ad content in most prominent smart TV platforms. Amazon is taking it a step ahead by automatically playing an ad directly on startup, with no user input beyond switching the TV on.
User reports (spotted by 9to5Google) indicate that some Fire TV owners are seeing fullscreen video ads that autoplay upon startup. The user did not even begin navigating the TV interface; the ad began from the homescreen itself without any interaction. A video of this behavior, as shared by the user, has been reproduced below: