Generally: no. By default the store app MIGHT show some logos for featured apps, but that's as far as it goes.
The live tiles for stores can show pictures of products. You can elect to remove them if you don't like them.
Live tiles are one of the most powerful and useful features of the windows start menu. Like any feature, it's conceivable they could be misused. Unlike notifications, the user has complete, simple, and quick control over offending input.
You're missing out. Win10 is very good to developers these days.
> By default the store app MIGHT show some logos for featured apps, but that's as far as it goes
Yeah, those are ads. It's like when the homescreen of my Kindle that I paid more for to get without "Special Offers" started showing books I may be interested in buying based on my reading history. Also known as ads.
It's insulting. I'm sure over their entire customer base it comes out as a positive feature for them, though. People more likely to click through to the store when they see a game name or screenshot they recognize, while only alienating a few.
At least, as you said, they offer an explicit and easy way to disable them, unlike Amazon at the time, who then took years to add an option to disable those.
Which, by the way, is all I'm asking for on the telemetry front as well. Opt-in by default all you want. Bury the setting three panels deep (don't reset it at your whim, though). I'll feel insulted and slightly dirtied, but I'll disable it and move on, active Windows customer that I am.
That's very misleading. The option is called "Suggestions" and it's on by default. I'm convinced they called it that because if they called it "Ads", everyone would turn it off.
> By default the store app MIGHT show some logos for featured apps
That is far from only problem. Here is a screenshot of a Win10 start menu, out of the box, at default settings. Count the ads:
Everything I hear about Windows 10 confirms my choice to steer clear.