• PC World, Wednesday, June 7, 2006 11:15 AM

First Google, then Microsoft, and now AOL. AOL's paying subscribers will now have something else to look when they read their e-mail: banner ads. According to an AOL spokesperson, the move is designed "to increase the delivery mechanisms of its online ad inventory." Hmm--perhaps it's also about gaining incremental ad revenue? Anyway, the practice of showing ads in free Webmail is becoming standard now that both Google and Microsoft are showing ads on their e-mail services. Fee-based e-mail accounts don't often show ads, as the absence is largely thought to be one of the benefits of being a paying subscriber. AOL has displayed banners on the AOL Mail inbox page for several years, but never alongside individual e-mail messages. Before deciding to go through with this, AOL apparently surveyed its users and ran a test, finding that they generally weren't bothered the appearance of ads. Interestingly, ads won't be targeted to users based on the content of e-mail messages.

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