Samsung Says Its ACR Captures Every Pixel. Inside Netflix, the Screen Goes Dark.

Vizio sells advertisers "glass-level" ACR data. Its last annual report to the SEC, filed before Walmart bought it, says some content agreements, including Netflix and Disney+, restrict it from using viewing data from people watching that content. LG said in September that its ACR does not operate inside third-party apps like Netflix or YouTube. A 2024 peer-reviewed lab test watched LG's ACR traffic drop to idle levels inside those apps.

That matters because Netflix and YouTube are more than a fifth of US TV viewing by Nielsen's own count, and ACR is the exposure file under a large share of CTV attribution. If the TV can't see the app, the ad seen inside it never makes the "exposed" group, and the lift math gets graded against a control group full of people who actually saw the ad. Nobody on the report can tell you by how much.

To be fair to the TV makers, as one longtime source told ADOTAT, the privacy pages aren't lying. The slogans are doing the work. Buyers don't read privacy pages. They read slogans. Ask your vendor which apps it can't see, and get the answer in writing before the next invoice.

Samsung, LG Ad Solutions, Vizio, Roku, Samba TV and TVision did not respond to ADOTAT's questions. Five companies that sell what the TV sees, and none would say what it doesn't.