While the thought of ads smacking me in the face right inside a core function of Windows 8.1 initially struck me as a pretty awful thing, they’re not as bad as I first imagined.
First, it should be noted that full-screen ads in Windows 8.1 are limited to Internet searches. You don’t have to allow the Search app to connect to the Internet if you don’t want to. Flip the toggle off, and it’ll only search your local files, emails, apps, etc. Do that, and you won’t see the ads.
They’re also nicely done (so far, anyway). Microsoft’s only testing full-screen Windows 8.1 ads with a handful of advertisers — big names like Disney, Volkswagen, Jaguar, Home Depot, and Norwegian Cruise Lines. They’re using big, high-quality images — which in a way actually make the Search app’s results screen look a lot nicer.
In fact, they almost make the Search app feel more like a customized, branded app for whatever it was you were searching for. Ultimately, if I entered a search for Volkswagen, chances are pretty good that I was actually going to click on Bing’s result for vw.com anyway. The fact that a big image tempting me to click through to VW appears now isn’t such a big deal.
Hero ads make it seem as though Microsoft has convinced these companies that it’s worth paying for a big, visual presence just to make sure that users don’t click — either accidentally or on purpose — results that pop up for other related sites that aren’t officially linked to the brand.
And before singling Microsoft out for putting graphical ads right in its operating system, don’t forget Google is testing giant banners atop results pages. The Web is really the heart of Google’s OS, so there’s not a heck of a lot of difference between the two ad systems.
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