Microsoft is testing new ads that appear on the Start menu for Windows users signed in to local accounts. The ads are designed to highlight the benefits of signing in with a Microsoft account, such as using the free Microsoft 365, getting 5 GB of cloud storage, and improving security. The company has been testing ads on the Start menu since November 2022.
Microsoft is also working on the possibility of disabling such ads. A researcher known as PhantomOfEarth noticed that in the “Personalization” -> “Start” section, the option “Sometimes show account-related notifications” will soon be available.
This is not Microsoft’s first experiment in introducing advertising into its own products. Last summer, users discovered ads for Microsoft 365 Family subscriptions in the Office 2021 menu. In the spring of 2022, the company introduced advertising directly into Explorer, and in 2016, Microsoft showed ads for OneDrive in the File Explorer app. Additionally, two years ago, the company tested ads for free Office web apps in the Wordpad for Windows 10 menu bar, and Edge ads were displayed in the Windows 10 Start menu every time a user searched for a competing browser.
