LG TVs’ integrated ads get more personal with tech that analyzes viewer emotions.

LG TVs will soon leverage an AI model built for showing advertisements that more closely align with viewers’ personal beliefs and emotions. The company plans to incorporate a partner company’s AI tech into its TV software in order to interpret psychological factors impacting a viewer, such as personal interests, personality traits, and lifestyle choices. The aim is to show LG webOS users ads that will emotionally impact them.

Zenapse, a company describing itself as a software-as-a-service marketing platform that can drive advertiser sales “with AI-powered emotional intelligence.” LG will use Zenapse’s technology to divide webOS users into hyper-specific market segments that are supposed to be more informative to advertisers. 

Zenapse’s platform for connected TVs (CTVs), ZenVision, is supposed to be able to interpret the types of emotions shown in the content someone is watching on TV, partially by using publicly available information about the show’s or movie’s script and plot, StreamTV Insider reported. ZenVision also analyzes viewer behavior, grouping viewers based on their consumption patterns, the publication noted. Under the new partnership, ZenVision can use data that LG has gathered from the automatic content recognition software in LG TVs.

With all this information, ZenVision will group LG TV viewers into highly specified market segments, such as “goal-driven achievers,” “social connectors,” or “emotionally engaged planners,” an LG spokesperson told StreamTV Insider. Zenapse’s website for ZenVision points to other potential market segments, including “digital adopters,” “wellness seekers,” “positive impact & environment,” and “money matters.”

With their ability to track TV viewers’ behavior, including what they watch and search for on their TVs, smart TVs are a growing obsession for advertisers. As LG’s announcement pointed out, CTVs represent “one of the fastest-growing ad segments in the US, expected to reach over $40 billion by 2027, up from $24.6 billion in 2023.”

However, as advertisers’ interest in appealing to streamers grows, so do their efforts to track and understand viewers for more targeted advertising. Both efforts could end up pushing the limits of user comfort and privacy.

LG is one of the biggest global TV brands, so its plan to distribute emotionally driven ads to the 200 million LG TVs currently in people’s homes could have a ripple effect. Further illustrating LG TVs’ dominance, webOS is estimated to be in 35 percent of US homes, per data that Hub Entertainment Research shared this week. As such, LG’s foray into advertising driven by AI’s ability to understand and appeal to viewer emotions could lead to other CTV OSes following suit.

Get out! Run far away! Kill your television!