Earlier this week, there was a leaked email that indicated that Samsung would not be doing any more in-app advertising on Samsung Pay. Well, now it’s official. The Korean OEM has indeed listened to the requests of its users to not show any more ads within the mobile payment app. Other 1st-party apps like Weather and Samsung Theme will also not have ads anymore and instead, they will be focusing on bringing ads to games and media “to strengthen the integrated Galaxy ecosystem experience.”
Earlier this week, an email exchange between an employee and Samsung Mobile President Roh Tae-moon was leaked discussing the discontinuation of in-app ads on Samsung Pay. This became official in a town hall meeting at Samsung Electronics Suwon Digital City where TM Roe said that they have decided to remove the ads from native apps which includes the Weather and ths Samsung Themes app as well. The ads have been a source of annoyance for a lot of users
The product and service recommendations that we were previously seeing on those apps will now show up in the official Galaxy Store and other apps related to games and media. What that means specifically is still anyone’s guess as we will probably have to wait for a future software update for the ads to completely disappear from the aforementioned apps. As to where they will actually show up is still not clear.
All they’re saying is that they are looking into “new growth opportunities” in terms of content and advertising services. And that may include gems and media and this is intended to “innovate the consumer experience” whatever that means. What we don’t know is if they will also discontinue serving new product announcements to current Samsung device users through Android-based notifications, which can also be pretty annoying.
No word yet as to when the software update for Samsung Pay, Weather, and Samsung Themes will be. If you still see ads now, it should probably be the last few days or months when you will see them.
