Advertisements are usually seen as something to avoid. In fact, eliminating them is a primary selling point for many paid streaming services. But, in this war between companies promoting their wares and customers avoiding those pitches, a new battlefield has emerged... your streaming devices.

This article looks at which streaming devices feature ads on their homescreens, how intrusive these ads are, and what can be done (if anything) to avoid them.

The Definition of an Ad

Times Square's many billboard ads

Ads probably seem like one of those “you’ll know it when you see it” kind of things. However, in this case, the line between an advertisement and a helpful suggestion can be quite blurry, especially with many advertisers formatting ads on streaming devices to resemble a suggestion or recommendation.

Most streaming service users expect to see personalized recommendations or suggestions based on their previous viewing. Some customers even rely on these suggestions to find something to watch.

Advertisers have realized this and are now attempting to exploit it by mixing legitimate recommendations for owned or available content with ads for unrelated, usually paid services you don’t currently subscribe to.

Related: The Best Streaming TV Services (Free and Paid)

What Differentiates an Ad From a Suggestion?

The crux of what makes an advertisement distinct from a suggestion for the purposes of this comparison is whether the product featured is one you already have a membership or subscription for, or if it is completely unassociated with you and unrelated to what you’re currently browsing.

A computer displaying the words Digital Marketing

For example, your Apple TV surfacing a thumbnail for the latest Apple Original series is clearly a suggestion. However, your Roku showing you a link to a Discovery+ show, while you’re browsing the Hulu app, is almost certainly an advertisement.

It's sometimes difficult to differentiate between ads and suggestions, so we'll provide examples of both below to help you tune into which is which. We will also help you limit the number of ads you'll be exposed to while using your streaming device.

Ads on Roku

Roku places advertisements in two locations. While they can show content from streaming services that you happen to subscribe to, they are in no way restricted to your services, and will surface promotions from any product Roku allows to place an ad.

Roku home screen with ad

Roku devices include one main ad slot on their home screens. It rotates promotions for most major streaming services and their content, regardless of whether or not those services are installed on your device.

Roku screensaver with ad placement

Roku also uses its screensaver to serve ads. They scroll by as part of the default cityscape screensaver in digital billboard form. Clicking one plays the advertised content (if you have a corresponding subscription) or brings up a download page for the app required (if you don’t have it installed).

How to Limit Ads on Your Roku Devices

As with most devices here, you cannot completely eliminate ads from your Roku device. But, there are two privacy-focused features that can be toggled to limit your personal data collection: "Limit ad tracking" and "Reset advertising identifier".

Roku advertising ID option

Limit ad tracking reduces the amount of data on your viewing habits that your device is sharing with Roku.

Roku Limit Ad Tracking option

Reset advertising identifier clears any previously collected data, and is useful when toggling the Limit ad tracking option for the first time.

Ads on Amazon Fire TV

Amazon Fire TV also features two ad slots of auto-playing video ads as well as static imagery.

Fire TV home screen

The first is a persistent slot at the top of the screen which remains present while scrolling through the Home, Find, Live, and Settings menus. Content includes media from installed and non-installed services.

Fire TV full screen video ad

Clicking on Learn more or scrolling up will result in most ads playing a full screen trailer for the content in question.

Additionally, promotional entries appear in the UI’s Sponsored row. These include specific shows and movies from subscribed and unsubscribed services, as well as entire streaming services and Prime Video Channels, like Shudder and AMC+. Some of these entries also include auto-playing trailers.

How to Limit Ads on Your Fire TV

As with Roku, Fire TV only allows you to limit the data it shares with Amazon. It does not support disabling ad placement slots completely.

Options for limiting data collection include:

A Device Usage Data option that enables or disables personal data collection for “marketing and product improvement purposes.”

Fire TV usage data setting menu

A Collect App Usage Data toggle, which enables/disables the collection of usage frequency and duration data for installed apps.

Fire TV Privacy Menu data collection setting

An Interest Base Ads option that determines if ads are based on the data collected by the above two options.

Ads on Apple TV

Apple TV includes no ads within the device line’s default interface. There are, however, several suggestion slots, which will be detailed below.

Apple TV "Top Shelf"

Selecting an app from the Top Shelf of Apple TV will result in a large logo (seen above) for many apps.

Apple TV's Suggestions for Prime Video

Or, if the app supports it, the device will show suggestions for what to watch within its library.

Apple TV full screen static ad

Some apps will also surface full-screen ads.

Apple TV full screen video ad

Leaving these apps selected or scrolling up from them will play a trailer or video commercial for the content, with arrows to scroll between additional trailers.

How to Limit Suggestions on Your Apple TV

Essentially the only impactful choice for shaping suggestions is a single toggle that changes the “What to Watch” content seen in the Amazon Prime example pic above to “Up next”.

Apple TV's Up Next interface

Up Next brings the focus from unwatched content you might enjoy to content that you’ve partially watched, or of which you’ve watched a previous portion, prequel, or season. If this option isn’t supported, apps will simply show a large logo instead.

Ads on Android TV

Android TV is a more varied offering than those above, due to its presence on first-party Google hardware and TVs and streaming devices from third-party manufacturers, like Sony and NVIDIA. Because of this, ad and suggestion placements vary slightly, but generally stick very close to the examples seen here.

Android TV's Home Screen

Essentially all Android TV-based devices show a banner ad at the top of their home screen. Its content includes installed and uninstalled sources.

An Android TV Ad

As with Apple TV, scrolling all the way up will result in a full-screen trailer.

A screenshot of Android TV's Featured Row

Most Android TV devices also include a Featured row, which promotes specific shows and movies from installed streaming services, as well as those the signed-in user has no connection to.

How to Limit Ads on Android TV

Unfortunately, there are no useful toggles for disabling ads or significantly curtailing data collection within most Android TV interfaces.

Android TV Privacy Options

However, there are several drastic options to prevent ads, such as installing a physical network filtering device to block the web domains serving ads, uninstalling all updates for the Android TV Home app, and installing a third-party app launcher to completely replace the default Android TV interface.

Related: Android TV vs. Google TV: What's the Difference?

All of these options have major drawbacks, including, respectively, an extra device to install and monitor, the loss of access to first-party Google services, or dealing with a less stable alternative launcher.

For this reason, we recommend avoiding any drastic measures unless you are very comfortable with tinkering with aspects of your device that could result in requiring a complete factory reset.

Related: How to Get Personalized Recommendations on Android TV

What Should You Do About Streaming Device Ads?

A sign pointing in two directions with the word Choice on each arrow

Ultimately, it’s your choice as to how many ads and what types of ads you find acceptable. Those that hate all promotions will most likely want to go with an Apple TV. However, its lack of ads comes with one of the steepest starting prices for branded device lines among those covered here.

Related: The New Apple TV 4K: Everything You Need to Know

Unfortunately, there also remains the possibility that Apple could add third-party promotions or increased ad placements to its own interface down the line.

Something similar happened to NVIDIA Shield owners that had purchased that device due to its initial lack of ads. This caused a massive online backlash and resulted in much of the user-powered research into extreme ad-blocking options for Android TV mentioned above.

Ads are, unfortunately, becoming par-for-the-course on streaming devices the same way they have on the rest of the web. While customers can vote on how they feel about this with their wallets, it looks like they're here to stay on the majority of platforms.

Image Credit: Wonderferret/Flickr