Microsoft is showing ads for Microsoft 365 Family subscriptions to its Office 2021 customers, offering them discounts of over $28 to get a 3-month Family plan subscription.
Several users have reported seeing these ads this week, starting on August 10, with Lee Holmes, a Principal Security Architect at Microsoft Azure Security, also sharing today a screenshot showing the ad displayed as an alert bar under the Office menu.
As shown in the screenshot below, Microsoft has tagged this ad as a "LIMITED OFFER," allowing customers to "Get 3 months of Microsoft 365 Family for only $$0.99."
What makes this ad even worse is that Microsoft uses a banner format similar to what it uses when asking Office users to enable macros, replacing the "Enable content" button with a "Redeem Offer" one.
Other customers have seen slightly different worded ads saying, "For just $$0.99, get 3 months of Microsoft 365 Family and share with up to 5 people. It is like getting six subscriptions in one. TERMS APPLY."
In this ad version, Microsoft also uses a differently worded button, prompting users to click a "Redeem now" button to get the heavily discounted subscription.
Ads everywhere
This is not the first time Microsoft has displayed promotional messages within Office apps or other Windows apps' user interfaces.
The company has also shown ads pushing its free Office web apps in the menu bar for the Windows 10 Wordpad application two years ago.
In March, Microsoft displayed ads for some of its other products (including Microsoft Editor) in the File Explorer app on devices running its latest Windows 11 Insider build.
File Explorer got injected with another series of promotional messages in 2016 when Redmond showed OneDrive ads.
Microsoft also displayed ads for Microsoft Edge in the Windows 10 Start Menu every time users searched for competing browsers, prompting them to download the new Chromium-based Microsoft Edge.
Unfortunately, some of these tests also had unintended consequences, with Microsoft breaking the Windows Start Menu and Taskbar while testing Microsoft Teams ads on Windows Insiders.
Comments
GT500 - 1 year ago
Welcome to a future where adware is built right in to even paid software from the largest publishers on Earth.
jimmyjones1256 - 1 year ago
So it's not just the OS anymore. They really do just want everyone reliant on the cloud to do anything. Too bad the service breaks nearly every other day.
lmacri - 1 year ago
Thanks for raising this issue. I have a perpetual (multi-year) license for MS Office 2019 Home & Business C2R that does not reach end of support until Oct 2025 and I've been seeing the same intrusive "TIME LIMITED OFFER" ads for Microsoft 365 Family since 05-Aug-2022, so it looks like Office 2021 users aren't the only targeted customers.
mynameisgod - 1 year ago
This is why we put a freeze on all microsoft products in 2016. I have been with Exchange since 1994, but we will never upgrade past Exchange 2016. We are never upgrading to Windows 11 or Server 2019 or higher. All new projects are Linux only.
Subscriptions can die in hell where they belong. Resist! Do not comply!
BH0 - 1 year ago
Yes, GT500, it really happened. Incredible heresy. Not only the idea to put advertisement into payed product.. sorry, service or? what is O365? .. but the amateurism to break functional applications that are used around the world and push users into "very-often-unavailable" cloud service and even worse - then use their anonimised data for marketing purposes... there is no hope for humanity driven by money.
GeekyGarden - 1 year ago
My company has O365 .... I just had a pop-up notification/ad on Win 11 to start my Office 365 subscription! WTF!