No it's not. Just like the adverts for the Empire at War DLC -a pop-up whenever you start the game until you tweak a setting or but the stuff- it is an invasive, annoying form of advertisement that forces itself on the player. One does not have to read the forum announcements about DLC, one does have to see the in-game advert if one clicks on that NPC (and there is no warning about the NPC not being usable beforehand). The two are not equivalent at all.