AOL subscribers up in arms over e-mail ads

Millions have canceled their AOL LLC subscriptions in recent years, but Barbara Borchers has remained a loyal paying member of the Internet service provider since 1997.

Even after signing up with a broadband provider, the Kentucky retiree decided to pay AOL $14.95 per month, mostly to keep the e-mail address she has had for almost 10 years, and also because of her high opinion of AOL’s technical support staff.

But Borchers is very close to joining the throngs of users saying goodbye forever to AOL. The reason? AOL’s recent decision to display to its paying subscribers ads along with e-mail messages for the first time. “I don’t want to switch to another e-mail provider, but I will if they don’t fix this so that these ads aren’t there anymore,” Borchers said.

She is not alone. In blogs, discussion forums and interviews, a number of AOL subscribers are loudly objecting to these ads, calling them intrusive, unsolicited, distracting and annoying. “These are animated ads. They blink on and off and carry on when you’re trying to read a message. They’re right there in your face,” said Borchers, who began getting them last week.

The banner ads appear below the e-mail message read form, just like they have appeared for years below the AOL Mail inbox. However, for users like Borchers, having them displayed along with e-mail messages crosses the line. These users don’t begrudge ads elsewhere on AOL, but they feel that paying members should be allowed to read e-mail messages in an ad-free territory.

Rebecca Monteiro, an AOL subscriber since 1997, also plans to cancel her membership. “These ads are almost the equivalent of having commercial music ads in the background of every telephone conversation,” Monteiro, who lives in Louisiana and started seeing the ads on Monday, said in an e-mail interview. “The worst part is that these ads are located on our private e-mails … the last place I’d expect or want to see an ad.”

B.J. Brooks, an AOL subscriber for over 10 years, also has definitive plans to cancel his account. He has a broadband connection and kept the AOL account to hang on to his e-mail address. “As a member I should be given the option to block [these] ads, should I desire,” he said in an e-mail interview.

Like Brooks, Linda Shinsky has been an AOL member for over 10 years and keeps her membership active mainly for the e-mail address, since she also has a broadband connection with another provider. Now she is planning to cancel as well. “Why pay for a service when there is no benefit?” Shinsky, a California resident, said in an e-mail interview.

The ads are being shown to AOL subscribers using version 9.0 of the company’s proprietary access software. AOL surveyed subscribers and found that displaying banner ads along with AOL Mail messages generally wouldn’t bother them, an AOL spokeswoman said Tuesday. The ads aren’t being targeted to users based on the content of e-mail messages, she said.