The boot-up commercial should be for antidepressants:

OK, this is a lot of Microsoft stuff for one day, but Ina Fried's scoop over at News.com is too interesting to pass up. Fried got hold of a Microsoft brainstorming memo that explores the possibility of offering online applications supported by advertising and even an ad-based version of the Windows OS. The subject is fair game, given that the competition, specifically Google, seems headed in that direction, but as the memo writers acknowledge, there are some considerable hurdles: "It seems possible that we could match that revenue [of retail Windows] via ads, but there are difficult UI (user interface) issues to solve, since the OS does not have a natural way to display ads that does not annoy users." Indeed. And aside from user reaction and technical issues, there are questions about the suitability of applications as ad delivery vehicles. As ZDNet's Phil Wainewright wrote a couple of weeks back: " Ads in applications don't work. All the evidence from the past ten years of online services is that the more engaged the user is in pursuing an activity, the less likely their attention will be diverted by an ad. The sole exception, which of course is why Google AdWords has been so spectacularly successful, is search, for the simple reason that clicking on relevant ads is a natural extension of the search activity."