I bought one of these TV's without realizing it would serve ads. It was a high end model that cost enough that I had no reasonable expectation that Samsung would try to make an additional 10 bucks off of me by showing me ads, but here we are.
The good news is you can block the ads. Here are some domains I've blocked in my router. They might not all be necessary to block, but they don't seem to break anything else (except perhaps Disney+) and they do stop the ads from appearing.
(Note: The only ad I was seeing was an additional ad box that was inserted as one of the sources on the source selector. It was only an issue if you were going from display to the TV's settings because it had inserted itself in between the two, and you could accidentally click on it. Blocking the following domains got rid of This.)
samsungads.com
ads.samsung.com
www.samsungotn.net
www.samsungrm.net
gpm.samsungqbe.com
samsungacr.com
samsungcloudsolution.com
samsungcloudsolution.net
samsungotn.net
The bad news is that the Disney+ app may not function properly if you block these domains. The obvious workaround is to use Disney+ from a browser, but that produces surprising results with this TV. Certain video sources, such as Disney+ or the trailers on IMDB, cause my Samsung TV to flash the following message:
"We are adjusting the picture quality for you to experience a better uhd screen. You can change the settings in Settings > General > External Device Manager > HDMI UHD color"
The screen then goes black and the only way to restore function is to unplug the HDMI cable and plug it back in. Very annoying.
The message describes settings that exist in the TV's configuration exactly as described, so it's definitely an error message produced by the TV set. Unfortunately, the settings referenced do nothing to eliminate this bug.
I've contacted Samsung's tech support a couple of times and they're utterly clueless about this issue. (Note: Not many people may report this error message because if flashes so fast that you need to photograph the screen in order to read it, and you have to have fast reflexes to do even that!)
All in all, despite the quality of the screen, these unresolved issues mean I will probably not buy another Samsung TV and recommend that others avoid this brand as well.
The good news is you can block the ads. Here are some domains I've blocked in my router. They might not all be necessary to block, but they don't seem to break anything else (except perhaps Disney+) and they do stop the ads from appearing.
(Note: The only ad I was seeing was an additional ad box that was inserted as one of the sources on the source selector. It was only an issue if you were going from display to the TV's settings because it had inserted itself in between the two, and you could accidentally click on it. Blocking the following domains got rid of This.)
samsungads.com
ads.samsung.com
www.samsungotn.net
www.samsungrm.net
gpm.samsungqbe.com
samsungacr.com
samsungcloudsolution.com
samsungcloudsolution.net
samsungotn.net
The bad news is that the Disney+ app may not function properly if you block these domains. The obvious workaround is to use Disney+ from a browser, but that produces surprising results with this TV. Certain video sources, such as Disney+ or the trailers on IMDB, cause my Samsung TV to flash the following message:
"We are adjusting the picture quality for you to experience a better uhd screen. You can change the settings in Settings > General > External Device Manager > HDMI UHD color"
The screen then goes black and the only way to restore function is to unplug the HDMI cable and plug it back in. Very annoying.
The message describes settings that exist in the TV's configuration exactly as described, so it's definitely an error message produced by the TV set. Unfortunately, the settings referenced do nothing to eliminate this bug.
I've contacted Samsung's tech support a couple of times and they're utterly clueless about this issue. (Note: Not many people may report this error message because if flashes so fast that you need to photograph the screen in order to read it, and you have to have fast reflexes to do even that!)
All in all, despite the quality of the screen, these unresolved issues mean I will probably not buy another Samsung TV and recommend that others avoid this brand as well.