Advertising has become an integral part of the connected television business, allowing smart TV manufacturers to monetise the home screen through sponsored content, premium app placements and targeted promotions.
But a new wave of AI-assisted tools is beginning to challenge that revenue model, allowing users to replace manufacturer-controlled interfaces and remove the very advertising inventory that OEMs sell to brands and streaming platforms.
Projects such as CleanYourTV and Free My TV are drawing attention to this possibility. Using AI coding assistants, some technically inclined users are modifying their television interfaces, disabling promotional services and installing alternative launchers that offer an ad-free home screen.
Projectivy Launcher, an alternative launcher for Android TV and Google TV devices, is reported by its developer to have crossed two million downloads.
The development comes as connected television advertising gains commercial significance in India. According to an August 2026 report by WPP Media and The Trade Desk, in partnership with Ormax Media, connected TVs reach approximately 207 million viewers across 62 million to 65 million households.
For OEMs, the home screen is no longer merely a gateway to streaming applications. It is valuable advertising real estate, where manufacturers can charge for visibility, influence content discovery and generate revenue beyond the initial sale of the television.
The emergence of tools capable of bypassing that interface raises a business question. Could consumers eventually remove advertising inventory that manufacturers have already monetised?
A small technical experiment could expose a bigger business problem
The first question is how many people are actually using these tools to remove advertising. There is no reliable figure yet to show how widely ad-blocking or ad-stripping applications have spread across smart TVs, or how much advertising revenue they have affected.
A business head at a global…