LG is trumpeting its NCAA "corporate partnership" by offering a series of "bundle promotions" across its 4K OLED TV lineup, the company said Monday. For example, buyers of a 65-inch 4K OLED TV at $5,999 can qualify for $1,000 savings plus a choice of a free 43-inch 4K LED-backlit LCD TV or a soundbar or a $300 gift card, LG said. The promotion began Sunday and runs through most of the March Madness NCAA basketball tournament, a spokeswoman said.

Though pregame critics gave LG’s Super Bowl commercial low marks for creativity (see 1602030044), the 60-second spot featuring Liam Neeson as pitchman for LG’s 4K OLED TV technology was a big hit with viewers and helped drive “digital engagement,” LG said Friday. LG cited the results of a survey from ACE Metrix, which measures the impact of video advertising, as ranking the LG spot ninth among the top 10 Super Bowl ads by “likeability,” based on the opinions of 500 consumers. LG also cited a blog post from Denise Chan, content marketing manager at Bitly, which as a gauge of viewer responsiveness measured the volume of clicks on Super Bowl advertisers' home page domains after their commercials ran. Among the 50 brands that Bitly observed, "LG saw the single biggest spike in volume” after its Neeson spot ran during the first commercial break after halftime, Chan said. Though Pepsi, Amazon and NFL.com “outperformed LG in sheer volume, LG had the most effective commercial when it came to converting TV watchers to web visitors,” Chan said. The LG spot also scored high on social media, LG said, citing data from the social media intelligence and measurement firm Infegy, which ranked the LG ad in the top four in its “Super Bowl Ad Social Media Scoreboard.”

The first-ever Super Bowl commercial from LG Electronics, touting the company’s OLED TV technology (see 1512160057), is scheduled to run during the second commercial break after halftime and again during the first commercial break of the CBS postgame show, LG spokesman John Taylor told us Wednesday. He wouldn't say how much LG is spending to produce and air the 60-second spot, which is the first Super Bowl ad run by a major CE manufacturer in several years. CBS is charging advertisers $5 million per 30-second spot to run a Super Bowl commercial, CEO Leslie Moonves said on a quarterly earnings call in August. To produce the spot, LG hired RSA Films, the production company run by Ridley Scott, who directed the Apple commercial during the January 1984 Super Bowl that launched the Macintosh. He also directed The Martian, which has been nominated for Best Picture at this year's Academy Awards, though Scott himself was denied a Best Director nomination. The LG Super Bowl spot stars Liam Neeson as a man from the future who visits the present to declare, "there's a revolution coming,” and “the future is staring back at us, like a perfect picture on glass.” An LG statement said the spot focuses “on how LG brings future-forward home entertainment innovations to consumers today with LG’s revolutionary OLED TV technology.” But early reviews haven’t been favorable since LG released the spot Monday on YouTube. LG “are rookies in the Super Bowl commercial game,” and it shows, said a writeup in the Washington Post. “For an ad that is apparently about a television, we sure get a lot of other stuff that’s not exactly the easiest to understand.” It compared the LG spot unfavorably with another "masterpiece" Super Bowl ad for the Mini automobile, featuring Serena Williams. Another review, from Engadget, said the LG spot represents “cheesy sci-fi,” and “aside from the strange sight of Neeson as an LG spokesman, there's little that sets it apart from the plethora of big-budget Super Bowl ads.”

Roku is running a $10-off deal for the Roku 3 with voice search, bringing the price of the streaming media player to $89. The offer is good through Saturday at 7 p.m. PST while supplies last. Free shipping is included.

Best Buy, CTA, Safe Kids Worldwide and Sanus are promoting TV safety on Saturday, National TV Safety Day, using the visibility of Super Bowl weekend to raise awareness about unsecured TVs and the dangers of tip-overs. Children under age 5 are at the highest risk of injury from unsecured TVs, CTA said, saying a U.S. child dies in the U.S. every three weeks due to a TV tipping over. CTA is urging parents and caregivers to do a “quick check of their home to make sure all TVs are safely secured and properly placed.” The Safe Kids initiative recommends mounting flat TVs to the wall to reduce the risk. CTA is also using the awareness effort to promote responsible recycling. Some 34 percent of U.S. homes still have at least one CRT TV, said CTA CEO Gary Shapiro, who estimated the total weight of CRT TVs in homes at 5 billion pounds.

Sprint and T-Mobile are hyping progress they're making on their networks versus AT&T and especially Verizon. T-Mobile premiered a TV ad during the NFL playoffs Sunday. In a take-off on Verizon’s colored balls ad, the piece shows five red Verizon balls headed down a ramp followed by dozens of magenta T-Mobile balls. “In the last two years, Verizon only added LTE coverage for 5 million people,” a female voice exclaims. “T-Mobile, they added 100 million.” A male voice chimes in: “Verizon didn’t tell you that, did they?” Without mentioning T-Mobile’s 700 MHz buys, the ad says the carrier’s in-building coverage is four times better than in the past. “Verizon is better at some things," T-Mobile CEO John Legere tweeted Sunday. "Like keeping secrets. It's time to spill the balls, once and for all.” Verizon also broadcast its own version of its bouncing balls ad repeatedly during the playoff games. Meanwhile, Sprint, which unveils earnings Tuesday (see 1601220047), said in a news release Monday that it has doubled its number of LTE Plus markets. Sprint also said a new report by Nielsen Mobile Performance said Sprint had the fastest LTE download speeds of the four national carriers. “Over 75 million downloads, collected from real consumers in cities across the country, show that Sprint wins where it matters -- the actual customer experience,” said CEO Marcelo Claure. “Our customers are experiencing a network that’s faster than the competition, and there’s never been a better time to give Sprint a try.”

Wearables made Amazon’s Deal of the Day promotion Friday at discounts of more than 20 percent. The four wearables in the bargain bin: a Lumo Lift Posture Coach and activity tracker ($49) that tracks steps taken, distance traveled and calories burned and sends gentle vibrations when slouching is sensed; a Lumo Posture Trainer ($99) that attaches to the lower back and trains a user to improve posture; and Myo gesture control armbands ($159 in black or white) that read electrical activity of muscles and arm motion to let users control technology with hand gestures.

Hisense signed on as a global sponsor of soccer's UEFA European Championship 2016, said the CE maker and the Union of European Football Associations, soccer’s governing body in Europe, Thursday in a joint announcement. The agreement is UEFA’s first sponsorship deal with a Chinese company in the championship's 56-year history, they said.

For a limited time, Amazon is offering Kindle e-reader customers a trade-in offer worth up to $45 on a new Kindle reader. To participate, a consumer answers questions about his or her device and ships the unit to Amazon with a free shipping label. Once a device is accepted, the customer can apply the gift card value of the old Kindle, plus a $20 bonus, to the purchase of a new device: a Kindle ($79), Kindle Paperwhite ($119), Kindle Voyage ($199) or Kindle for Kids bundle ($99).

The FTC put digital marketers and publishers on notice about using deceptively formatted advertising such as native ads or sponsored content that are "often indistinguishable from news, feature articles, product reviews, editorial, entertainment, and other regular content." The commission voted 4-0 approving an enforcement policy statement that lays out general principles used to determine "whether any particular advertising format is deceptive, in violation of Section 5 of the FTC Act ... if the ad misleads reasonable consumers as to its nature or source, including that a party other than the sponsoring advertiser is its source." FTC also issued guidance Tuesday to help companies comply by offering examples of when disclosures are needed and how they should be displayed within native ads. Consumer Protection Bureau Director Jessica Rich said in a news release the policy "applies time-tested truth-in-advertising principles to modern media. People browsing the Web, using social media, or watching videos have a right to know if they’re seeing editorial content or an ad.” Center for Digital Democracy Executive Director Jeff Chester in an emailed statement said the FTC's action is a "wake-up call" for digital marketers who will be penalized for "failing to ensure that so-called 'native ads' are clearly recognized as paid pitches." But he said the policy statement and guidance don't specifically address a growing practice called "programmatic native," which is used to create and deliver native ads by data profiling individuals. "The FTC should have specifically addressed it in its guidance and not just in a footnote (cite 50)," he wrote. "Given the growing data-driven capability of native ads to be formatted to reflect a person’s interests and online behavior, as well as how it’s designed to work well on mobile devices and other screens, there are questions about the effectiveness of disclosure." The FTC's policy statement and business guidance were produced based on a December 2013 workshop on the topic plus two years of research, the release said.