Advertising On Samsung Galaxy Devices Backfires Users Not Happy

Samsung Australia is believed to be considering a move to place advertising on some of their devices.

The concept has already been rolled out in the USA and Korea and some smartphone owners are not happy.

According to the Korean Herald, Galaxy smartphone users have complained over the unwarranted banner advertisements on default applications like the weather app which appears on most of their devices.

Multiple complaints have been posted by users on the Samsung Members site, lamenting about the discomfort of being exposed to banner ads on the weather app in Samsung’s Android-run Galaxy devices spanning both smartphones and tablets.

One screenshot posted by a user showed an image of a red pepper ad with the phrase: “Why hot weather brings appetite for sour and spicy food.”

“I found this ad on the weather app after an update,” the user said. “I have been using the default app because I hated seeing ads on other weather apps developed by outside developers.”

Aside from the weather app, Samsung Health and Samsung Pay have also been displaying banner ads.

In response, the company said, “The banner advertisement for the weather application is currently applied selectively and we have yet to make a decision on expanding it in the future,” without elaborating further.

It also said that the advertisements are displayed only in South Korea and the US for now.

Samsung management believe that because they have access to a base of tens of millions of consumers who use their devices they could “possible” generate millions in advertising revenue in direct competition with Google.

“This was one of the ideas behind developing their own Tizen OS” said one source.

“Samsung believed that they could compete up against Google in the advertising market”. They added.

About Post Author

David Richards

David Richards has been writing about technology for more than 30 years. A former Fleet Street journalist, he wrote the Award Winning Series on the Federated Ships Painters + Dockers Union for the Bulletin that led to a Royal Commission. He is also a Logie Winner for Outstanding Contribution To TV Journalism with a story called The Werribee Affair. In 1997, he built the largest Australian technology media company and prior to that the third largest PR company that became the foundation company for Ogilvy PR. Today he writes about technology and the impact on both business and consumers.