{"id":468151,"date":"2022-11-09T17:51:03","date_gmt":"2022-11-09T15:51:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=468151"},"modified":"2022-11-09T17:52:33","modified_gmt":"2022-11-09T15:52:33","slug":"windows-11-starts-testing-ads-in-sign-out-menu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/software\/468151-windows-11-starts-testing-ads-in-sign-out-menu.html","title":{"rendered":"Windows 11 starts testing ads in sign out menu"},"content":{"rendered":"

Microsoft has started testing ads in the account sign-out menu in Windows 11, BleepingComputer reports<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Screenshots of the ads were shared by Windows enthusiast Albacore (@thebookisclosed<\/strong><\/a>) on Twitter a few days ago.<\/span><\/p>\n

They show three different ads that appeared in the flyout menu that popped up when users clock on their account name or picture in the Start Menu.<\/p>\n

The ads appear as a line item in the menu list above the “Change account settings” option.<\/p>\n

In one instance, Microsoft advertised OneDrive storage with a “Back up your files” line.<\/p>\n

In two other cases, it encouraged the user to sign up for a Microsoft account either with a direct “Sign up for Microsoft Account” ad or more subtle “Complete your profile” prompt.<\/p>\n

The screenshots below show what the ads looked like.<\/p>\n

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Several users said the inclusion of the ads within the Start Menu was curious, given that Microsoft already used much of the component for recommendations, which promotes its products.<\/p>\n

BleepingComputer could not replicate the ad prompts on several of their own systems, which suggests that they are part of an A\/B testing experiment. Therefore, some users will see them and others won’t.<\/p>\n

MyBroadband also did not see the ads on one of our systems, although this could have been due to the user being logged into a Microsoft account with a OneDrive subscription.<\/p>\n

Microsoft has been testing ads<\/strong><\/a> for several of its products within various Windows 11 components in the past year.<\/p>\n

That has included banners promoting OneDrive and other Microsoft products in File Explorer.<\/p>\n

It previously also tested promoting its Office web apps and Edge browser in the Windows 10 Start Menu and Wordpad app.<\/p>\n

\n

Now read: Microsoft speeds up chat and channel switching in Teams<\/a><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Microsoft is testing ads in the Start Menu, despite already populating the component with recommendations promoting its own products. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341042,"featured_media":465559,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[41880,81905,123,43684,60187,70233],"class_list":["post-468151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-software","tag-advertisements","tag-bleepingcomputer","tag-microsoft","tag-operating-systems","tag-start-menu","tag-windows-11"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468151"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341042"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=468151"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":468279,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468151\/revisions\/468279"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/465559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=468151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=468151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=468151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}