Unfortunately that appears to be what Samsung is doing. According to a report from Android Police, it seems that Samsung has been pushing out ads via the notification shade to some of its users. Apparently the ads are being pushed out by Samsung Push Service whose original intention is to provide notification support for Samsung Pay, Samsung Link, and so on.
However we suppose using it to push out ads is another use for it, as some users have recently started to find out. No doubt that this is going to upset many users since like we said, you just paid hundreds of dollars for a new phone, so there really is no reason for Samsung to use your device as an advertising platform.
In fact many weren’t happy when HTC announced that ads would be arriving in BlinkFeed, but even then that made sense as the ads were part of the news that was displayed, kind of like what you’d expect from a newspaper or magazine. This just seems a bit invasive and uncalled for. It is unclear if this was done in error or if Samsung was simply testing things out, but what do you guys think? Should Samsung be doing this to their customers?