Samsung just ended native in-app advertising officially

After a leak of info earlier this week, it's become far more official: Samsung Pay will no longer have advertisements. This will require a software update in the near future, but should be coming soon. Samsung Mobile President Roh Tae-moon suggested that this move was due to requests from customers and employees.

The release earlier this week appeared on an anonymous sharing app and showed an email between an employee and TM Roe. In a town hall meeting at Samsung Electronics Suwon Digital City in the afternoon after said email exchange, TM Roe made a more official statement. Per Yonhap News, TM Roe said that for apps like Weather, Samsung Pay, and Samsung Theme, "We have decided to remove ads from native apps [such as these.]"

"We have been seeking new growth opportunities in the fields of content and advertising services such as games and media to strengthen the integrated Galaxy ecosystem experience," said TM Roe (basic translation). "It is our most important mission to innovate the consumer experience based on this."

Samsung's product and service recommendations that would have otherwise appeared in native apps will now appear in places like the official Galaxy Store. "We will do our best to provide useful information that customers need through search and recommendation in the content service or Galaxy Store," said TM Roe.

So you'll still get directions on what to buy by Samsung if you really, really want to be told what you'll need to buy next. It remains to be seen if Samsung will ever end their system of notifying current Samsung device owners that new devices have been released via Android-based notifications.

This notification system links to the Galaxy Store, which could mean that we're not at the end of this "Samsung selling Samsung to Samsung users" situation just yet. Take a peek at the timeline below to learn more about how far we've gone.