I think Smart TVs cost more to produce than they could, because they include hardware for automated content recognition and other ad/data-related functions. I was asking what would happen to TV prices if manufacturers did not include this hardware.
And I think I can answer my own question. A few years ago Vizio claimed to earn roughly twice as much from ad sales and data collection versus device sales to consumers [0]. So I guess that even if Vizio could build an otherwise-equivalent TV more cheaply than they do now, if they did not do ad sales and data collection then those TVs would have to cost over 3x more than what they sell for now to maintain margins. Which is not going to happen.
[0]: https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/10/22773073/vizio-acr-adver...