Are the advert-ridden applications made by Microsoft? If so that says something about how far they have fallen. Why compromise your brand when your making money on hardware and software?

I'm fine with advertisements in desktop apps. Those guys have to make money. But I think there should be a way to pay a fee and forcibly remove them even if the developer didn't code for it. It's your machine, after all.

Are these applications really bundled by Microsoft or are they pre-installed [1] by OEMs that sell Win8 with their hardware?

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-installed_software

The "advert-ridden" applications are without exception, storefronts.

You enter an app who's purpose is to allow you to purchase videos or music, and then complain that there are ads there?

The Ask toolbar integrates itself into IE, Firefox and Chrome. It runs even when Java doesn't and is difficult to get rid of this.

So this is way different than having a couple of banner ads showing up inside the app only when the app is running and you can uninstall the app in five seconds.