After sniffing around the computer

Jul 24, 2007 15:05 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft has discovered a way around the limitations of Internet advertising, serving Windows users ads directly on their desktops. But not until the contents of the machine are completely analyzed and evaluated in order to compile an user profile that would tailor fit the targeted advertising model. While Google is synonymous with Internet search and cannot easily be dislodged from its position of online advertising leader, Microsoft plans to use Windows as a leverage point to throw the Mountain View company of track.

"An advertising framework may reside on a user computer, whether it's a part of the OS, an application or integrated within applications. Applications, tools, or utilities may use an application program interface to report context data tags such as key words or other information that may be used to target advertisements. The advertising framework may host several components for receiving and processing the context data, refining the data, requesting advertisements from an advertising supplier, for receiving and forwarding advertisements to a display client for presentation, and for providing data back to the advertising supplier," Microsoft revealed in the "Advertising services architecture" patent.

Essentially, what Microsoft's Windows advertising framework will do is to harvest data from the resources stored on the local computer. This will create a contextual environment for Microsoft and the company will be able to serve targeted ads to Windows users in direct correlation with the data sources residing on the machine. The Redmond company plans to use both the built in components of the operating system as well as additional applications to collect information on the user and server advertisements.

"Various display clients may also use an application program interface for receiving advertisements from the advertising framework. An application, such as a word processor or email client, may serve as both a source of context data and as a display client. Stipulations may be made by the application hosting the display client with respect to the nature of acceptable advertising, restrictions on use of alternate display clients, as well as, specifying supported media," Microsoft added.