Some Amazon Echo Show users cry foul over stealth ads - bug or business plan?

Amazon Echo owners are sounding the alarm over a surge of unwanted advertisements creeping into their smart homes, raising questions about whether it’s a deliberate push by the tech giant or an unintended glitch. Reports flooding Reddit in recent months describe two troubling trends: mysterious skills displaying ads on Echo Show screens and Alexa’s voice chiming in with unsolicited product pitches after routine commands.

It started subtly. Last fall, a Reddit user known as “seamonkey420” noticed an uptick in ads on their Echo Show’s ambient home screen — promotions for Amazon products and sponsored content that hadn’t been there before. Digging into their Alexa app, they stumbled upon a skill called “JHCP Prod,” one they swore they’d never installed. Its description? “Used to facilitate rendering of advertising on the ambient home screen of Alexa multimodal devices.” After disabling it, the ads vanished. Commenters chimed in, some finding the same skill — or similar ones like “Ambient Visions” — lurking on their devices, often without their consent. “36 F’in skills!” one user, “Muchablat,” exclaimed. “I never added them myself nor consented to have [them] done.”

The situation escalated this week with a new Reddit post from a different user complaining about Alexa interrupting routine tasks with verbal advertisements. According to the post, their Echo Show would execute commands as usual but then follow up with unsolicited recommendations like, “By the way, a new Alexa device is coming out soon. Would you like me to show it to you?” or “By the way, there’s a new book out by an author you’ve never heard of. Would you like to order it?”

Despite having all notifications and recommendations turned off, the user was unable to stop these interruptions. Many in the community shared their frustration, with some threatening to ditch their Echo devices in favor of alternatives like Google Nest.

Interestingly, some users found a workaround by verbally commanding their Alexa device to “stop by the way.” This reportedly disabled the intrusive follow-up ads — at least temporarily. However, others pointed out that Alexa often re-enables the feature over time, prompting users to set up daily routines to disable it repeatedly.

These findings have ignited speculation that Amazon is silently testing ad-serving mechanisms on unsuspecting users. While advertising on Echo devices isn’t new, the fact that a hidden skill was enabling these ads without user consent raises ethical concerns. It also highlights a growing tension between Amazon’s push for monetization and user expectations of a seamless, ad-free smart home experience.

For now, it seems the best defense is vigilance. Check your skills, tweak your settings, and hope that Amazon isn’t planning even more aggressive ad placements in the future. Otherwise, Alexa might soon find itself replaced by an assistant that actually listens to its users rather than advertisers.