Newjack, there were no ads on it originally or I would have returned it to the store and gotten my money back. What happens is that these televisions work kind of like computers in that you always have to update them to protect from cyber attacks. That's also how you access additional features that might come along and ads weren't marketed as features - at least not to me. Well, these firmware updates are where they get you! One minute everything is fine, the next minute, here come the ads. It would be like Apple and Microsoft forcing computer owners to view ads each time they ran an update.