Remember the Telly from 2023? The company made big promises, offering the TV for free if users agreed to watch ads. A success? Not quite.
Telly aimed to deliver 500,000 TVs to American homes in 2023, with "millions more" in 2024. By summer 2023, they claimed to have over 250,000 pre-orders in just one week.
So how many Telly TVs have actually reached American homes? Only 35,000, according to the company's own data for Fall 2025. That means the majority of pre-orders never materialized.
The numbers come from a leaked investor presentation obtained by Lowpass.
A free TV with ads
Telly is a 55-inch LCD TV with 4K resolution, built-in soundbar, camera and microphone. Under the TV is a secondary screen showing ads and widgets, which, according to Telly's terms, must remain visible. Troves of personal data are also collected.
Users who can accept this arrangement get the TV shipped for free to their home.
One major challenge for Telly has been shipping damage. According to Lowpass, 10% of all Telly TVs sent via FedEx were broken upon reaching the customer. The TVs are not sold through electronics stores but shipped directly from Telly's warehouse.
Another challenge has been financing the large number of TVs produced by Foxconn before they start generating ad revenue.
A third emerging challenge is consumers' growing awareness of what the Smart TV concept entails. A core feature of Telly is ACR (Automatic Content Recognition), which constantly takes screenshots of everything you watch. Five TV manufacturers have just been sued for using ACR.
Telly shows ads and widgets on the screen under the main display. Photo: TellyHigher ad revenue than Smart TVs
A bright spot for Telly is that ad revenue per TV is higher than for typical Smart TVs. In Q3 2025, each Telly TV generated over $50 in quarterly ad revenue on average.
By comparison, Roku, the TV platform most focused on ads, generates $41.49 per TV annually. Roku's TVs are sold at low or no profit margin.
Still, the lukewarm sales suggest that a free TV with ads and extensive data collection may not be as appealing as the industry had hoped. There has not been much news from Telly since 2023, and the company still operates only in the US.
- Source: Lowpass
