IIRC back when computers were a fair amount more expensive in the early 00s, eMachines and some other ultra low cost computing platforms came supported by installed adware for extremely low costs - I bought one at that time as it was the only machine I could afford to buy, and there also was ad-supported dial up Internet you could access (NetZero et al.) I reformatted the disk, installed a Windows 2000 Pro copy I had to it, and got a cheap tower from it.

Perhaps all is old is new again, but I can’t imagine this model leading to significant growth in today’s market. PCs are vastly more commoditized than they were then; my local supermarket sells low-end Windows and Chromebook machines for very little, and refurbished/recycled business machines with Skylakes can be had for $150 on eBay. If people want inexpensive computing platforms there are many more options and this doesn’t even include ultra cheap tablets or prepaid Android devices.

Here’s a paper from 2004 that explains it: https://escholarship.org/content/qt2t03k647/qt2t03k647_noSpl...