Apple Ads Target People Looking for Windows 7 Download Help

November 5th, 2009 at 4:07 PM - News by Bryan Chaffin

Apple has been buying ad space on Google for people looking for help with downloading Windows 7. Google searches for "Download Windows 7" often result in an ad from Apple titled, "Upgrading to Windows 7?" The ad then advises users that, "There's never been a better time to switch to a Mac. Find out why." It links directly to Apple's site.

The ad came to our attention via Preston Gralla in his "Seeing Through Windows" blog for Computerworld. Mr. Gralla noticed the ad and suggested that Apple was targeting Windows pirates looking to download Windows 7 illegally. This is largely because the same ad is not to be found on Google searches for "Buy Windows 7," something we also found to be the case with several score of test searches.

However, we found the reasoning of a commenter on the post to be more likely. T. Hunter wrote, "Apple are targeting the many millions of people whose copy of Windows 7 will not download properly! Hence the ad being placed on 'download', not 'buy' or 'purchase'."

That's a fairly sound analysis, but whatever the case, we found Apple's ad to be very interesting.

Apple's ad on Google.
Apple's ad is highlighted in the screenshot above.

3 Observer Comments

Bryan Chaffin said on November 5th, 2009 at 6:36 PM:

It’s clever of Apple to target people having trouble with Windows 7 download updates.

One thing I noticed, BTW, is that when Apple’s ad appeared, it was always at the top, above competing ads from Dell, Microsoft, Newegg, etc. The way Google’s AdSense works, that means that Apple’s bid price for its ads is higher than the other guys.

Constable Odo said on November 5th, 2009 at 10:47 PM:

A Windows user would only need a spare hard drive to move some of their old data files and stuff from their old drive. Then just erase the old drive and do a fresh install. Installing Windows 7 is a breeze. I did a Windows 7 install in a Parallels Desktop 4 virtual machine and then one in a VMWare Fusion 3.0 virtual machine on my iMac just for testing purposes. It took very little time at all and they practically configured themselves. I just reinstalled some applications and had nice clean Windows 7 Ultimate OSes. There should certainly be companies that would come to your house to do it for people that weren’t sure how to proceed in upgrading from Windows XP.

As you can easily see that people are upgrading much faster with Win7 than with Vista. I’m sure Apple isn’t going to get very many switchers due to a few Windows XP install/upgrading problems. Those people will just wait until their machines die and get a new one with Windows 7 already on them.

guna said on November 7th, 2009 at 4:14 AM:

gunasekaran

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