MediaBuyerPlanner: AOL has reconfigured its email services available at AIM.com and AOL.com so that the services will disable images by default, reports ClickZ. AOL’s hosted email service joins Gmail, Windows Live Hotmail and Outlook, all of which disable images.
Yahoo also recently began to screen out images. Deirdre Baird, CEO of Pivotal Veracity, expects that mailers that rely on images in emails will see a drop in open rates and click rates this year.
The implications of the disablement of images include the blocking of banner ads within HTML newsletters to problems tracking open rates.
In a recent review of 1,000 emails, the Email Experience Council found that 21 percent appeared blank when images were disabled inside a variety of email clients and services. More than a quarter displayed copy, but links were dysfunctional.
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