I agree, it's not the technology itself. I think it's due to the industry maturing and consolidating, and simply optimizing - they look for new avenues of profi

I agree, it's not the technology itself. I think it's due to the industry maturing and consolidating, and simply optimizing - they look for new avenues of profit, and they happened to have found user-hostile ones. But be careful with "TVs exist without ads and they are apparently still profitable" - 'profitable' won't stop them if adding ads means they could be more profitable.