DirecTV screensavers will show AI-generated ads with your face in 2026
According to a March blog post by Ian Anderson, Glance’s vice president of AI, Glance avatars “analyze customer behavior, preferences and browsing history to provide tailored product recommendations, improving engagement and conversion rates.”
In a statement today, Naveen Tewari, CEO and founder of Glance, said the screensavers will allow people to “instantly select a brand and reinvent themselves in the brand’s catalog right from their living room TV.”
DirecTV screensavers will also allow users to create 30-second AI-generated videos featuring their avatar, The Verge reported.
In addition to providing an “AI commerce experience,” DirecTV expects the screensavers to help with “content discovery” and “personalization,” Vikash Sharm, senior vice president of product marketing at DirecTV, said in a statement.
The screensavers will also be able to display real-time weather and sports scores, Glance said.
A natural progression
The reliance on ad-centric screensavers can frustrate customers who weren’t expecting ads when they purchased Gemini devices for their streaming capabilities.
However, DirecTV has a growing advertising business that includes experimenting with ad types, such as ads that appear when people pause. When it comes to offensive ads, screensaver ads can be considered less intrusive because they typically only appear when someone is not actively watching their TV. Gemini screensavers can also be disabled.
It has become increasingly important for DirecTV to diversify its revenue beyond satellite and Internet subscriptions. DirecTV had more than 20 million subscribers in 2015; By 2024, streaming trade publication Next TV, citing an anonymous source “close to the company,” reported that the AT&T-owned company had only 11 million subscribers left.
Simultaneously, the streaming industry, including streaming services and software, increasingly relies on advertising to increase revenue. For some streaming service providers, increased revenue from advertising is starting to eclipse the pressure from subscriber numbers. Given DirecTV’s declining audience and growing interest in streaming, finding more ways to sell ads seems like a natural progression.
With legacy pay-TV providers already facing declining subscriptions, the introduction of new types of advertising also risks making DirecTV less attractive.
And it’s likely that things won’t stop there.
“This we can integrate into different places on TV,” Mansi Jain, COO of Glance, told The Verge. “We’re starting with the screen saver, but tomorrow… we can integrate it into the TV launcher.”
