In Messenger Plus! 3.40.x (and later) the option to remove the advertisement banner from MSN/Windows Messenger has been removed.

Patchou will not put it back in for the reasons described below:

• based on a quote from Choli:
  Patchou added an optional sponsor in Messenger Plus!. It's optional, but if nobody installs it, Patchou doesn't earn any money and development will stop. So, Patchou wants that people install his sponsor (maybe not all his users, but some percentage).
  
  In this scenario, isn't it strange that Patchou removes the MSN advertisement banner that gives Microsoft money?
  
  Just like Patchou needs to earn money, Microsoft needs to earn money too to keep developping MSN/Windows Messenger. This is (partially) done by showing ads in Messenger. And behind Messenger there are lots of programmers that have to be paid each month. No money, no MSN/Windows Messenger...
  
  So it is logical that Patchou has removed the option to remove the MSN advertisement banner.
  
  
• based on a quote from Chrono:
  Since patchou has his own (optional) sponsor program, he knows that the generated money by these MSN advertisements is important to Microsoft.
  
  
• based on a quote from Demandred:
  So why didn't Patchou removed it in previous releases then?
  
  
• based on a quote from Patchou:
  I removed it only now because the technical changes in MSN Messenger 7 forced me to reconsider this feature.
  
  Please, try to understand. I know some of you really don't like this but it is final (and it's not like www.mess.be doesn't offer alternatives).
  
  Though, the reason to remove this feature is not entirely technical, it was still possible to do. But I also felt this option had no place in Messenger Plus! anymore because Microsoft wants MSN Messenger 7 to start generating some real revenue and I'm not going to cause them troubles.
  
  I also assure you that Microsoft never asked me to remove this feature from Messenger Plus!.
  
  In the end there will always be other addons/patches to remove the banner anyway, so you'll always have an option, one way or the other.
  
  Thank you for understanding.