A Roku-assigned patent application, filed in the US as US20230388589A1 and titled

Future Roku TVs may inject tailored ads into anything and everything when you pause

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2024-04-17 18:30:04

A Roku-assigned patent application, filed in the US as US20230388589A1 and titled "HDMI customized ad insertion," outlines a fairly convoluted system that ultimately shows adverts on your telly or some other display whenever a pause in playback is detected.

The proposed patent, published at the end of last year and spotted now, describes a display device that can show advertising after identifying a pause in the video content from an HDMI-connected media device. Crucially, it says the display and media hardware can be the same device, ie: a smart TV like that from Roku. There are two ways of looking at this design: A way for standalone televisions and projectors to show their own ads during a pause, and a way for integrated smart displays to do the same.

This would presumably also mean ads can run in the middle of a gaming session or a video being played via a PC, if the monitor or TV in use were to adopt this tech.