Samsung's $2000 smart fridges are getting ads

Guess which new feature is coming to Samsung smart refrigerators? Ads. This is not a joke.

Samsung is the latest to display ads on your smart home devices. It's a sad reality we are living in, especially considering how pricey these fridges are.

(Image via Samsung)

Ars Technica points out that Samsung’s Family Hub fridges have MSRPs from $1,899 to $3,499. Yikes! Samsung will bring ads for its high-end smart fridges through a software update this month. You can read about the update on Samsung's website.

(GIF via The Verge)

The ads are part of a new widget that will be located at the bottom of the Cover Screen, when the fridge is idle. The widget refreshes its content every ten seconds. In addition to highlighting news, calendar, weather forecasts, the widget will show curated advertisements. These ads are contextualized, i.e. non-personalized.

The ads aren't displayed on all screens, it only appears on the Weather and Color theme screens. So if you have the Art or Album screen, it won't have the widget. These aren't the only ads that you will see on your fridge. The update will bring a Daily Board theme, which displays useful information at a glance. While it does not have a widget, it will display an ad on one of its 6 tiles.

Samsung is rolling out the update to Family Hub fridge models with a 21.5-inch or 32 inch display. But the ads will only start appearing next week. They are enabled by default, but Samsung says users can opt out of it from the Settings.

However, this also removes the Daily Board theme completely, meaning you won't be able to see the information. You'll have to choose between an ad-free experience, and the widget. Once an ad has been dismissed on the Cover screen, it won't appear during the campaign period.

As for the company's plans for ads, Shane Higby, head of Home Appliance Business at Samsung Electronics America, told The Verge that fridges are a daily hub, and Samsung is testing a responsible, user-controlled way to make that space more helpful. While it appears to be limited to Samsung's own ads at the moment, the South Korean electronics giant is planning to open up ads to third-party advertisers.

Reddit users say that using a PiHole with an ad-blocking DNS blocks ads on Samsung TVs and Roku, it may block the ads on your fridge too. I never thought I'd write something like that. Time for a midnight snack ad.

Do you use a smart fridge?

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