Samsung’s New QLED Ad Will Pretend To Turn Your TV Off Automatically, And Probably Annoy You

How many TV bingers have suffered through a particularly bothersome ad on TV, whether it’s a commercial for a local used car dealership proclaiming ubiquitously low prices accompanied by sirens keening or a heavy-handed moral lesson framed as an everyday occurrence attempting to scare the audience? If not all, then certainly most couch potatoes have been subjected to this sort of thing and had best prepare for more if they live in the UK.

Samsung is set to introduce an entirely new subspecies of annoying advertisements on television with fake static and automatic shut-off of whichever set you happen to be using in order to promote their new line of QLED displays, according to Engadget’s Chris Velazco. Quoting today’s press release from Samsung, Velazco pokes a bit of fun at the audacity of the irritating commercial.

“Screens will buzz with static and interference before going blank and entirely silent, leaving viewers staring into the void – or searching for their remote controls – for five long seconds. The darkness ends with text emerging, which reads: ‘This is your TV screen… most of the time; a void full of nothing.’ It then explains the virtues of Samsung QLED technology which has an ‘ambient’ mode meaning viewers need never see a blank screen again.”

Though 2018 is often heralded as a banner year of the 4K or UHD TV, few viewers know that there is a format war brewing among the industry’s largest competitors.

QLED, or quantum dot LED, technology is the newest iteration of UHD technology being adopted by manufacturers, including Samsung, HiSense, and TCL. In the developing OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) market, which LG pioneered last year and now sees Sony entering the fray, there is a great deal of talk as to whether Samsung will stick to their guns in developing a QLED lineup or whether the Korean tech giant will instead fork their product offerings and also enter into direct competition with LG and Sony (and others) in the expanding OLED offerings.

The planned Ambient Mode ads are, for now, limited to the United Kingdom in scope, although speculations are arising that the manufacturer may take the ad campaign global depending on audience reception to the ploy. No target is safe from the limited-run marketing campaign set to hit more than 200 spots across 18 different channels to ensure maximum penetration of the concept. Promoting Ambient Mode functionality may prove to be a hit or maybe a grand flop – the idea is certainly novel and aesthetically interesting – but the methods employed to raise consumer awareness of the option coinciding with an attempt to plant the notion of a slimline, VESA mounted TV on the wall as simply an ugly black box – are risky propositions given the rather simplistic solutions being offered.

It may just turn out that by bugging potential customers about their premium ultra high-definition televisions with a message that shows their existing TV going on a faux-fritz backfires and generates negative publicity. Only time will tell with regards to the results of this unorthodox gamble.