I have a fairly expensive Google TV and I have to navigate past rows of promoted content to get to the streaming apps I actually installed and want to use.
If you dig down into the account settings there is an "apps only" mode that brings back the grid.
I did try to use that, but it removed some other fairly useful functionality that I can't remember now. They clearly don't want people to use that feature.
I'm dreading the day my LG TV decides it doesn't want to allow me to disable ads.