Windows Phone Thoughts: Windows Phone 7 an 'Ad Machine'? Don't Believe the Hype

"According to Mallios, Microsoft will allow advertisers to send push notifications to peoples' devices through a new platform called Toast. Toast will serve ads to the devices much the same as Apple's iAd will serve ads to iPhones. Advertisers will even be able to push ads to phones even when the application isn't running. The ads will drop down from the top of the phone's screen to let users know there's an offer. Again, that sounds horrible to me."

Complaining about online ads is a fashionable pastime, and Information Week's Eric Zeman is concerned that a quote from Kostas Mallios, Microsoft's general manager for Strategy and Business Development, means that Windows Phone 7 will somehow be significantly different from other phones on the market when it comes to serving ads. The reality? Microsoft needs to be competitive with Google, who bought AdMob, and Apple, who bought Quattro Wireless. If Microsoft wants the best developers to come to the Windows Phone platform, they need to provide strong monetization options for those developers. You're not going to see Microsoft do anything crazy here - they can't afford to, regardless of how you interpret the quote from Mallios.

I don't mind ads, as long as they're not obtrusive ads - pop-ups, full-page whizzy Flash ads, etc. So as long as the ads on a free Windows Phone 7 application aren't irritating, I have no objection to them. Hopefully most developers will offer paid, ad-free versions of their apps.