CANNES – Smart-TV startup Telly seeks to transform the value proposition for consumers by offering them free TV sets in exchange for seeing advertisements. Without spending any money to advertise the product, Telly received 250,000 orders for its set in its first week.

“These are people who are very interested in our product,” Ilya Pozin, founder and chief executive of smart-TV startup Telly, said in this interview at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. “They love what we’re doing and they want to own the smartest television in the world and they want in their home, and they know they’re getting it at the best deal on the planet for free.”

First Free, Ad-Supported Television Set Readies for Primetime

Giving away products for free could be seen as a sign that Telly’s customers are lower-income consumers who aren’t appealing to advertisers. Instead, the company has received orders from a desirable demographic group, Pozin said. He previously co-founded Pluto TV, the streaming service that’s free to watch and makes money by selling advertising.

“The kind of people that are signing up are actually over-indexing on income. They’re smarter, they’re wealthier, they’re two-thirds Gen Z and Millennials,” Pozin said. “This is a product that we knew that was going to be broadly accepted by most people in the United States and it’s proven out.”

Making Smart TVs That Live Up to the Name: Telly’s Ilya Pozin

You are watching “The Transformation Of Television: Connected, Addressable & Outcome-Based,” presented by Go Addressable & Teads at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. For more videos from Beet.TV’s Cannes Lions 2023 coverage, please visit this page.