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Column: Hey Microsoft, Ad-Supported Business Software Won't Work

A columnist for Traffick.com argues that Microsoft is going down the wrong path with its proposed ad-supported business software. He contends that since products like MS Office are primarily used for specific business purposes, advertising will, at best, be ignored by users. He also says that pay-per-click ads work because user-initiated action leads to the relevant placement of ads, but when someone is working on a spreadsheet, an ad would simply be disruptive, distracting the user from the task at hand. However, a year and a half ago, people said the same thing about Gmail, and while it is not widely known how much profit Google generates from its e-mail service, the text ads generated from an e-mail's content are almost never talked about anymore as intrusive or distracting. It will be interesting to see how effective Microsoft's plan for monetizing its new business software will be.

Read the whole story at Traffick.com »

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