Oh please. My 300$ 55" TCL TV with Roku does show ads for TV shows in the start menu, but it very far from what is described in this article. Same goes for my Fire Stick which is shows ads for their new shows in the main menu.
I have never interacted with any device that did something as egregious as adding a banner on live TV.
I have the very same thing you have, and I have started seeing banner ads from Roku on my Apple TV! It appears in the form of a banner overlaying on top of my Apple TV content saying something on the lines of “more ways to watch this content”. I haven’t interacted with the banner yet and don’t know if it’s actually scanning the content to generate recommendations, but regardless I thought it was incredibly invasive of Roku to insert ads into a service it had absolutely nothing to do with.
This thread reminded me of the issue and I’m currently looking into how this can be disabled. Apparently there is a Roku setting that can disable these ad inserts — if that doesn’t work, off with Roku’s internet privilege. Apple TV’s UX is leagues better anyway.
I have never interacted with any device that did something as egregious as adding a banner on live TV.