I just finished setting up a custom router with dns ad blocking. Next comes a media player so I can purge this smart TV filth from my household.
Huge shout out to Louis Rossmann and the FUTO communuty contributors, check out the wiki on self-hosted software if you haven’t already.
I would recommend hard power cycling the TV and re-evaluating. For example, on both my TCL Roku and LG WebOS TVs, home screen ads are completely eliminated with pihole dns blocking. Additionally, I got rid of home screen ads on my Nvidia shield and other devices.
Make sure that you’re blocking the right domains.
Edit: before anyone says “but why even connect the TV to the Internet at all?” - the reason is because you’re likely to get the best HDR quality (especially Dolby Vision) from the TV’s native streaming apps. Dolby vision is an absolute fucking disaster on external devices and barely works at all on Windows (if at all.)