As many of you have no doubt probably seen by now if you've been connected to Xbox Live, Microsoft's new dashboard advertisements have begun appearing for Xbox 360 owners.
Rather than the standard, static advertisements you're used to seeing, these bring running commercials to your 360, in some cases complete with video and, more annoyingly, sound. You can see an example of one running in this video here.
Josh Lovison, of digital media experts the Emerging Media Lab, tells us that these new Silverlight ads won't as intrusive as you may have first feared, as they've been designed to "fit with the rest of the interface". So you won't be seeing pop-up ads, or replacement banners, or watermarks, or news tickers, or anything like that. You'll just be seeing ads running in the same NXE "windows" as you find everything else on the console's user interface.
Interestingly, Lovison also says that Microsoft's entire move to the New Xbox Experience may have been partly influenced by the desire/need for advertising, as the "windows" that all NXE content is displayed in, from videos to demos to Xbox Live Arcade titles, "just so happen to be IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) standard sizes". Meaning a Flash/Silverlight ad from a website can be dropped directly onto the 360 dashboard.
I haven't seen one of these myself yet; I'm presuming you can just navigate away from them, and aren't forced to watch them?