AOL has begun inserting short text ads for its products and services to the bottom of e-mail sent from paid-subscription AOL accounts.
According to press reports, the company began last Tuesday to attach the ads to e-mail sent using its AOL 9.0 software. Users of its free Web-based Webmail service have been seeing such ads for about eight months, a company spokesperson told the Associated Press.
The ads direct readers to a Web site for “The New AOL”, offering free security tools, free videos and free AOL Mail.
The AOL spokesperson told AP that the company plans to use the ads to promote AOL services and has received “a smattering” of e-mailed complaints from subscribers.
In June 2006, paid AOL subscribers began seeing banner ads below the e-mail message read form read box in their inboxes. The ads are not targeted to the content of the e-mails being read.
After losing subscribers to broadband service providers, AOL has recently begun moving to an ad-supported model and making formerly fee-paid content available to general users.
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