It’s not just streaming services ratcheting up the number of ads you’re watching. It’s now your kitchen appliances, too.
Samsung will begin displaying advertisements and promotions on the screens of its Family Hub refrigerators in the U.S., the company confirmed to Fortune.
“Samsung is committed to innovation and enhancing every day value for our home appliance customers,” a spokesperson told Fortune in a statement. “As part of our ongoing efforts to strengthen that value, we are conducting a pilot program to offer promotions and curated advertisements on certain Samsung Family Hub refrigerator models in the U.S. market.”
The Family Hub refrigerator—which will set back buyers at least $1,799—is a smart appliance featuring a touchscreen display with applications for household task management and entertainment.
Part of a software update, advertisements will appear on certain refrigerator cover screens when the Family Hub fridge is idle. Users can dismiss specific advertisements on the cover screen to ensure they won’t be shown for the ad campaign’s duration, and ads will not display when the cover screen is in Art Mode or showing picture albums.
Android Authority first reported the update.
Americans have gone from seeing about 500 advertisements a day in the 1970s to more than 5,000 daily, as of 2023. Over 90% of digital display advertising comes from programmatic ads, or automatically generated marketing usually using AI to target specific audiences for a product. But the proliferation of programmatic ads has raised concerns about privacy, including about smart appliances collecting data, such as smart TVs taking screenshots of what users are watching.
Samsung said in its first phase of the pilot, Family Hub will display ads, but not collect data about consumer ad interactions. The company emphasized the purpose of the pilot program was to more broadly get consumer feedback on the software update features.
Samsung’s ‘screens everywhere’ approach
Though Samsung users may now have to view an ad while grabbing some orange juice from the fridge, brand loyalists may recognize the company’s strategy of being heavy handed in where it displays marketing.
In 2015, the company came under fire for reportedly inserting ads every 20 to 30 minutes into users’ locally stored content on Samsung smart TVs, including from third-party servers like Plex and Foxtel. Other users complained of pop-up ads for “Yahoo Business Interactivity” when they were using streaming services. The company said at the time that this pop-up was supposed to be opt-in only; it did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment about its advertising patterns.
Over the past year, Samsung has doubled-down on an initiative to put “screens everywhere” on its products, expanding its Bespoke AI features to digital displays on its washers and dryers.
Jeong Seung Moon, executive vice president and head of research and development for the Digital Appliances Business at Samsung Electronics, told The Verge in April that the philosophy around installing digital displays was meant to improve accessibility and eliminate inefficiencies of household tasks.
“First, carrying out household tasks often involves the use of multiple appliances located in different areas of the home,” he said. ”Managing these different tasks across multiple devices can waste time, but the screen resolves these issues by acting as a central control hub that seamlessly connects the home’s appliances. For users, this means they get to control their home environment from wherever they are, saving time and effort.”
At the time, Moon said Samsung did not feature promotions on its displays and had “no plans regarding the inclusion of advertisements on AI Home screens.”
“Any future policies will be guided first and foremost by what best serves our customers’ needs,” he added.
