Windows 7: The Next Advertising Medium?

Life within electronic billboards, less so 'life without walls'

So far, Windows 7 has already captured the imagination of PC users, with some claiming it to be everything that Windows Vista wasn't though should have been.  Some of our team members at Matchmaker Marketing have installed Windows 7 onto their computers and waxed lyrical over its performance.  These include driver compatibility issues, which have been addressed, its user interface and a less nagging User Account Control system.

If the news according to Web User magazine is anything to go by, we could see the end of its honeymoon period arriving shortly.  The decision by Microsoft to allow advertising on your Windows 7 desktop could become as popular as whooping cough, bubonic plague and a marathon run of Eldorado on BBC Three.

This move will allow advertisers like Coca Cola and 20th Century Fox to turn your PC's desktop into an advertising hoarding.  As well as on your desktop, adverts will appear on your desktop's taskbar and as an add-on within Internet Explorer 8.  The themes are available as optional downloads within the Microsoft website's Personalization Gallery.

In our honest opinion, we feel this could deviate from the original aim of making Windows 7 a more lightweight operating system.  Turning your desktop into advertising space is akin to bloatware, which at best is an annoyance, and at worst, could mutate into adware.  What would happen if an unprotected (or even protected) Windows 7 box with Pepsi adverts is hijacked by a trojan or rootkit?  Unscrupulous types could find the source code and turn it into a marketplace for dodgy prescription remedies.

In the last decade, we have seen various advertising schemes launched to 'personalise' their PCs.  1999 saw defunct PC retailer Tiny launch a range of free PCs with internet access, so long as users were prepared to sit through adverts.  Gator's ad aggregation saw the unscrupulous side with spyware infecting many a PC.  More recently and most controversially, BT tried to do the same with Phorm.  Who knows if we could see more of the same from our very desktop?

Our choice of desktop wallpaper should be down to us, which remains so at this moment in time.  I doubt as if this form of personalisation would catch on.  Who wants to be interrupted by adverts whilst building websites or working with Photoshop?  We have pop-up blockers and plug-ins like NoScript to eradicate this.

Only choose the advertising option if you like to have your PC slowed down for the sake of a few adverts.  Everybody else must avoid.


S.V., 17 November 2009