MMV is intended to be supported primarily by advertising and employs a unique and unobtrusive means for presenting ads to users.

MMV's carefully targeted ads are not revealed to a user unless the user voluntarily selects the Things panel to view them. The reason users are permitted this level of control is because they will typically perceive MMV's value in light of their sense of ownership of the environment it provides. A product intended to replace the OS desktop, such as MMV, must adapt to this reality or risk failure.

History has shown that consumers reject even high-value products when those products incorporate intrusive advertising. An obvious example is the experience of Free-PC.com in the 1990's. Consumers were offered free personal computers in exchange for unavoidable on-screen advertising. Consumers rejected that idea in favor of retaining personal control of their computing environments and Free-PC soon went out of business.

MMV's innovation is its inclusion of advertising into users' primary computing environments without users sensing a loss of control or personal ownership.

To notify a user that an ad of interest is available for viewing, MMV signals its user by flashing the icon on the edge of the Things panel. That icon may also be briefly changed to the logo of the advertiser or any icon the advertiser deems "enticing" to potential customers. When the user selects the Things panel, it opens exposing the presentation. All ad presentations are transferred using spare bandwidth — when MMV is not actively transferring data in response to a user activity.

MMV's unique "curiosity-killed-the-cat" method of discreetly flashing an icon on the edge of the Things panel entices users to open the panel to find out what it contains. This behavior is further reinforced by the assurance that only advertising of clear interest to its user will be presented. Thus, a user's curiosity is likely to be rewarded with an ad of interest and his or her voluntary viewing behavior will be reinforced.

The Things panel offers these additional benefits to advertisers:

• It permits an advertiser to have a much larger canvas than traditional web-banner advertising because the Things panel can be opened to nearly full-screen.
• The Things panel includes e-commerce features that can operate across all of a user's access devices.
• E-commerce features permit a purchase to be made without requiring the series of steps needed to transfer control to an advertiser's web site.

To serve the privacy concerns of users, each user is permitted to view and edit his or her e-commerce profile. Thus a user may request, enable, or block classes of advertising presentations targeted to the user via dynamic usage analysis. In fact, all information MMV has gathered regarding a user is made visible and editable to the user through this profile.

Ad targeting is performed by analyzing usage activity in the MMV interface, as well as metrics provided by external sources. Such usage activity includes navigational activity in the Places panel, keyword analysis in the People panel, storage selections in the Home panel, as well as past ad-viewing choices in the Things panel.

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