TLDR
The smart-TV business is no longer primarily about selling televisions. LG’s own corporate strategy makes that explicit.
LG says it is transforming from a traditional product company into a platform and services business built around recurring revenue. Its webOS advertising and content operation passed KRW 1 trillion in annual revenue in 2024, and LG wants its broader platform-services business to grow more than fivefold by 2030 and eventually generate 20 percent of the company’s total operating profit. LG describes hundreds of millions of products already sitting in homes as the installed base it can use to generate continuing revenue from content, services, and tailored advertising.
The television is therefore no longer just the product. It is the installation point for the platform.
That changes everything. LG owns webOS, sells home-screen advertising, operates Automatic Content Recognition, creates behavioral audience segments, measures ad exposure, connects Smart TV data with household graphs, sells cross-device campaigns, and tells advertisers it can reach the “connected LG household.”
At some point, calling LG merely a television company stops describing what the company actually does.
LG increasingly looks like a data, advertising, and platform company that also happens to manufacture excellent screens.
The Old TV Business Was Almost Embarrassingly Simple
Television manufacturing used to have a brutally straightforward business model. A company engineered a television, manufactured it, shipped it to a retailer, and tried to make enough margin on the sale to stay in business.
Once the customer took the television home, the economic relationship was mostly over. The manufacturer might handle a warranty claim or sell another TV eight years later, but there was no reliable way to keep making money every Tuesday because somebody was still using the television.
Smart TVs changed that.
The screen gained an operating system. The operating system gained apps. Apps required accounts, cloud services, recommendations, telemetry, updates, and eventually advertising. Once manufacturers controlled the software layer, they discovered that the television could continue producing revenue long after the hardware sale.
LG has been unusually candid about pursuing exactly that transition.
LG Says It Is Moving Beyond the Sale of Physical Products
LG itself describes its corporate transformation as moving beyond one-time hardware sales.
In a 2025 article written by the head of LG’s webOS Platform Business Center, the company said its transformation involves “moving beyond the sale of physical products” toward continuous customer engagement and diversified revenue through long-term relationships. LG called webOS a cornerstone of its platform-centric future.
That is not an interpretation from a privacy critic.
That is LG explaining its strategy.
The company has also said it is accelerating its transition from a traditional product-centric model toward recurring revenue generated through subscriptions, content, services, and other non-hardware businesses.
The television sale gets LG’s platform into the house.
The platform keeps producing money afterward.
That is a fundamentally different business from traditional consumer electronics.
webOS Is Now a Billion-Won Advertising and Content Machine
The numbers show why LG cares.
LG reported that its webOS-based advertising and content business exceeded KRW 1 trillion in annual revenue in 2024. The company said this represented roughly four times the level achieved in 2021.
LG’s 2025 strategy went much further. The company said its platform-based services business is part of a shift toward a higher-profit business model and aims to increase revenue more than fivefold by 2030, eventually contributing 20 percent of LG’s total operating profit. LG specifically says the strategy uses hundreds of millions of LG products already sold around the world as platforms for generating revenue through content, advertising, and services.
That sentence should fundamentally change how people think about a Smart TV.
The television in your house is not only a television LG already sold.
It is part of the installed base supporting LG’s future profit strategy.
The Hardware Business Can Struggle While the Platform Keeps Making Money
The economic incentive becomes even clearer when hardware gets difficult.
LG reported an operating loss in its display-based businesses for 2025 amid weak demand and intense competition. At the same time, the company said webOS continued to grow at a double-digit rate across an installed base of approximately 260 million devices.
That is exactly why platform revenue is attractive.
Television manufacturing is brutal. Panel prices change. Competitors slash prices. Demand falls. Consumers wait years between purchases.
Advertising revenue behaves differently. Once the platform is installed, every active screen can continue participating in a content-and-advertising business without LG manufacturing another television for that household.
A company does not need to sell you another OLED this month if it can keep monetizing the OLED already on your wall.
LG Wants More Screens Running webOS, Including Screens It Did Not Manufacture
LG is also expanding webOS beyond its own TVs.
The company said in 2025 that more than 600 global brands had adopted webOS Hub, its platform for other display manufacturers. LG is expanding webOS into commercial displays, hotels, public institutions, vehicles, and other environments.
LG previously said its goal was to expand webOS beyond Smart TVs into projectors, digital signage, in-vehicle infotainment, and third-party televisions, with the platform reaching hundreds of millions of devices.
That is platform-company behavior.
Microsoft does not need to manufacture every PC running Windows.
Google does not need to manufacture every Android phone.
LG increasingly does not need to manufacture every screen running webOS.
The operating system itself has become an asset.
Then Comes ACR: The Screen Becomes a Data Source
Owning the operating system makes advertising valuable.
Automatic Content Recognition makes the platform more valuable still.
LG Ad Solutions says its first-party ACR technology informs viewing behavior across linear television and streaming “at the glass level.” It markets audience targeting based on shows, networks, apps, services, subscriptions, purchases, rentals, advertising exposure, gaming platforms, specific game titles, viewing intensity, ad skipping, and location.
LG’s current consumer-facing privacy statement says ACR is optional and off by default. It says ACR can identify supported content from sources such as live television, HDMI-connected devices, and LG Channels, and that ACR-related information may be used for audience segmentation and trend analysis. Interest-based and cross-device advertising require additional consent.
Those consent controls matter.
They do not change what the technology is for.
The television can become an audience-measurement device.
LG Calls What Happens on Your TV “Genuine Human Behavior”
LG’s advertiser-facing language removes any ambiguity about the value it sees in this information.
In announcing a partnership with Akkio, LG Ad Solutions said ACR data captured directly from LG Smart TV glass provides one of the strongest views into “genuine human behavior” in media. LG said the information reflects what viewers actually watch, skip, and engage with moment by moment.
That is an extraordinary transformation of an ordinary household activity.
You watch television.
LG’s advertising business sees behavioral intelligence.
The raw material is not pixels. It is what people do.
The TV Is Also Advertising Inventory
The behavioral information is only half of the model.
LG controls places where advertisements can actually appear.
LG Ad Solutions promotes dynamic advertising integrated into the LG Smart TV home screen. Its sales material describes the home screen as premium advertising inventory on the largest display in the house.
This creates an unusually powerful vertical stack.
LG makes the television.
LG owns the operating system.
LG controls parts of the user interface.
LG operates ACR.
LG has first-party behavioral information.
LG sells advertising inventory on the screen.
LG provides measurement.
LG can sell cross-device campaigns.
At that point, describing the company as simply a hardware manufacturer becomes almost comical.
“Direct-to-Glass” Is the Business Model in Three Words
LG calls one of its advertising strategies Direct-to-Glass.
The idea is straightforward. Rather than advertisers negotiating separately with every app or television network, they can work with the television manufacturer itself. LG says this lets advertisers reach audiences regardless of how those consumers access content and gives them cross-platform audience insights and campaign measurement.
Another LG article explains the advantage even more clearly: television manufacturers represent the actual devices where ads appear and can use ACR to capture on-the-glass data, giving advertisers direct visibility into viewing preferences.
The fragmented media ecosystem becomes LG’s opportunity.
Netflix, cable, gaming, streaming apps, and other content sources may all be separate businesses.
The glass underneath them is LG’s.
That is why the operating system matters so much.
Household Targeting Turns a TV Viewer Into an Advertising Identity
LG’s ambitions extend beyond one screen.
In 2022, LG Ad Solutions announced that its anonymized household-level Smart TV data would be connected with Omnicom’s household graph, enabling advanced audience targeting across more than 20 million LG Smart TV households in the U.S. at the time.
LG’s current advertising page tells marketers to “Own the living room” and surround the connected LG household beyond the television across mobile, tablet, and desktop devices.
This is where a television company becomes something else entirely.
The business is no longer just displaying ads on a screen.
It is identifying households, building segments, measuring behavior, and helping marketers coordinate campaigns across devices.
That is ad-tech.
Political Advertising Shows the Scale of the Platform
LG’s 2026 political advertising pitch makes the scale particularly obvious.
LG Ad Solutions advertises 49 million U.S. LG Smart TVs and 363 million addressable secondary devices as part of its political advertising opportunity. It pitches campaigns on precise reach, voter segments, ACR data, and cross-device targeting.
This is not a criticism of any particular political party or campaign.
It is a business fact.
The television has become part of a large-scale targeted political advertising platform.
That is a long way from selling screens.
LG Is Becoming a Data Company Because Data Improves the Economics
This transformation is not mysterious.
Hardware margins are difficult.
Recurring platform revenue is attractive.
Data improves targeting.
Targeting improves advertising economics.
Advertising makes the installed base more valuable.
The larger the installed base, the more attractive the platform becomes to advertisers.
The more advertisers participate, the more valuable LG’s platform business becomes.
That is the flywheel.
LG’s own investor materials say exactly what the goal is: expand the installed base, increase webOS users, grow advertising and content revenue, and make the platform a larger contributor to company profitability.
Privacy is therefore not some unrelated policy department sitting off to the side.
Privacy sits directly against LG’s growth incentives.
The Screen Is Becoming the Trojan Horse for the Platform
LG still needs to build televisions people want.
Great picture quality matters. OLED matters. Price matters.
But the value of selling that screen has changed.
Every new Smart TV can also become another webOS installation.
Another household on the platform.
Another potential LG Channels viewer.
Another home-screen advertising surface.
Another potential ACR-enabled device.
Another audience relationship.
Another endpoint for content, services, and cross-device campaigns.
That is why smart-TV companies increasingly resemble software and advertising companies.
The screen gets the platform through the front door.
Are Smart TV Companies Becoming Data Companies That Happen to Sell Screens?
In LG’s case, the answer is increasingly yes.
LG remains a massive hardware manufacturer. Televisions, appliances, vehicles, HVAC, and other physical products remain central to the company.
But that is no longer the whole story.
LG itself says it is moving beyond physical product sales toward recurring platform revenue. It has a billion-won webOS advertising and content business. It wants platform services to become a much larger share of profits. It operates ACR. It sells behavioral audience segments. It sells home-screen inventory. It connects household-level Smart TV information with advertising systems. It markets cross-device reach. It licenses webOS to other manufacturers.
At some point, the better question is not whether LG still sells televisions.
Obviously it does.
The better question is what the television is now for from LG’s perspective.
The consumer sees a screen.
LG increasingly sees a platform, an audience, an advertising surface, a data source, and a recurring revenue relationship.
That is not a television business with a little advertising attached.
It is a platform business built on top of televisions.
References
LG Electronics, 2025 Corporate Strategy. LG says its platform-based services business uses hundreds of millions of installed products to generate advertising, content, and services revenue and aims to increase platform revenue more than fivefold by 2030.
LG CEO Outlines 2025 Strategy
LG 2024 Financial Results. webOS-based advertising and content revenue exceeded KRW 1 trillion in 2024.
LG 2024 Financial Results
LG, “webOS: Powering Our Next Growth Chapter.” LG describes webOS as a platform business expanding beyond TV hardware, with more than 600 brands adopting webOS Hub.
LG on webOS Platform Growth
LG Ad Solutions, Trusted ACR Technology. LG’s advertiser-facing description of glass-level viewing information and behavioral audience segments.
LG Ad Solutions ACR Technology
LG Ad Solutions, Direct-to-Glass Playbook. LG explains why television manufacturers occupy a valuable device-level advertising position.
LG Direct-to-Glass Playbook
LG Ad Solutions and Omnicom. LG Smart TV household data was integrated with Omnicom’s household graph for advanced targeting.
LG Smart TV Data and Omnicom Integration
