Microsoft has  announced its intention to integrate Bing Ads into Smart Search, so that ads are served when users search for content within their existing data as well as on the Internet.

Writing on the Advertising Community blog, David Pann, General Manager of the for the Search Network at Microsoft Corporation said:

Now, with a single campaign setup, advertisers can connect with consumers across Bing, Yahoo! and the new Windows Search with highly relevant ads for their search queries.

The Smart Search ads will feature a preview of the websites the ad will send people to, as well as click-to-call info and site links, which are additional links under the main result that direct users deeper into a website to the most likely page they might want.

Advertisers might be impressed with this strategy, but is it an ad too far as far as end users are concerned?

Thom Homlerda writing on OSnews expresses a dissatisfaction that many are likely to share:

So, you pay for a product, and then Microsoft shoves ads in your face. Scumbags. Then again, they've done the same on the Xbox, which is now virtually unusable due to all the ads plastered all over your dashboard. And then people say Google is bad with ads.

And what will be the impact on developers?

At the beginning of May devs were complaining about the lack of revenue from Bing Ads and were also discovering that Microsoft was only interested in big spenders on this platform.