Pluto Co-Founder’s Telly Startup Giving Away 500,000 Dual-Screen TVs

Ilya Pozin, who co-founded free streaming service Pluto, has a new ad-supported venture with a killer pitch: sign up for Telly’s unique two-screen television/soundbar, answer a bunch of questions, and get the TV for free. Even better, the hardware is capable of being far more than just showing video, with streaming data widgets, games, workout programs, music player, voice calling, a voice-activated smart assistant, and much else.

“When the iPhone first launched, it killed a bunch of devices,” said Pozin, Telly’s founder and CEO. “I personally see a lot of the same thing happening here. It’s kind of sad that the biggest device in your home isn’t all these things. Can we get rid of the cost (of the screens and soundbar)? There’s no money there anyway.”

It’s a different take on the ad-supported business model, betting that people will disclose to Telly (and its advertiser clients) basic information about their interests and preferences in exchange for a unique, highly capable device that features a main 55-inch, 4K HDR TV set and a second 9-inch high bottom screen sandwiched around an integrated sound bar.

The Telly sets include a streaming dongle with a “forked” variant of Alphabet’s Android TV operating system that connects the TV to all the apps for subscription and ad-supported streaming apps from all the big services and many others. It also has a built-in tuner to pick up over-the-air digital broadcasts.

The set also connects to a big music-streaming service (Pozin couldn’t yet announce which one), sensors for gaming, camera and microphone for video calls, a voice-controlled assistant, three HDMI ports and two USB inputs. The TV also has 40 built-in games, access to workout videos on YouTube, and more.

“TVs are a commodity,” Pozin said. “When that happens, it’s a race to the bottom for price. When there’s no margin on hardware, 50 cents (of cost from a new feature) makes a big difference. When that happens, there’s literally zero innovation.”

Pozin and Telly can afford to give away the sets because of that second screen at the bottom. While the TV is being used, a portion of the screen will show ad-related content continuously, everything from splash pages to QR codes to dynamic content, all targeted to the household of that specific TV.

The rest of the smaller screen can display such info-widget material as sports scores and betting lines, stock prices, weather forecasts, breaking news and the like. It also can provide content recommendations to watch on the big screen, much as the Apple
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TV attempts to do within its interface, but without privileging Apple content in the results.

“Our second screen can start giving you content recommendations basied on similar audiences around the country,” Pozin said. “We think we can build a much more robust content recommendation engine because we’re Switzerland. I feel like our bottom screen can centralize a lot of that content.”

Built-in cameras and microphones allow the TV sets to handle tasks such as interacting with the Hey Telly voice assistant, do workouts with built-in programs, play games, and make video calls.

The second screen will keep operating, and showing ads, as long as the set is being for anything, like playing music through the five-speaker soundbar.

Pozin said the connection from Pluto to Telly is “very natural,” relying on the power of ad-supported media that can be targeted and optimized in a way that wasn’t possible in the days of broadcast or cable TV.

After a deep and expensive dalliance the past few years with subscription streaming-video, just about every company with an SVOD service except Apple has pivoted hard into ad-supported TV, either with standalone services such as Pluto (part of Paramount Global since 2020) or a separate tier of linear or on-demand programming, such as with Disney+ and Netflix
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As well, hardware makers Samsung, LG, Roku, and Vizio all have a free, ad-supported offering. Vizio’s WatchFree+, for instance, has 270 FAST channels of programming.

Telly is betting on the growing enthusiasm among ad buyers to take advantage of connected TV, as they shift money from older forms of media, including broadcast and cable.

A recent report from the Internet Advertising Bureau projected that digital video ad spending will jump 17% this year, to $55.2 billion, with connected TV ad spend particularly hot, rising 22% in 2022. Two-thirds of buyers responding to the IAB survey called connected TV advertising “a must-buy.”

“Booms don’t last forever, and inflation and economic worries may have finally slowed the roll of consumers looking to stack traditional and streaming subscription TV services,” said study co-author David Tice. “However, FASTs have maintained their momentum this year; In a time of economic uncertainty, ‘free’ is a powerful differentiator.”

The company opened a reservation system today at www.freetelly.com to begin taking orders for the first 500,000 units, which Pozin said will begin shipping this summer.

He said that tranche of the TVs will likely be distributed throughout this year, with more to come as the venture expands, though he said the company would “never charge” for its hardware, even if it ultimately begins offering an even larger setup next year or thereafter with a 65-inch screen.

The service’s lead investors include LightShed Ventures, the venture fund of pot-stirring industry analyst Rich Greenfield’s LightShed Partners, and the venture fund for long-time digital marketing personality and proselytizer Gary Vaynerchuk.