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Faster ads for dialup users - 11/12/08

From: Email Guy
Subject:       Faster ads for dialup users
Date: November 12, 2008 12:22 PM
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If you view Web Mail over a dialup connection, you may have noticed a change lately. For about a week now we've stopped serving graphical banner advertisements when the page is viewed over dialup, and replaced them with light-weight plain text ads. Right now this is a test, but it may lead to a permanent change.

We've debated the whole advertising issue in other threads on this blog already and I know lots of users wish they weren't there at all. But one common complaint from dialup users is that graphical ads slow things down. Even though we load them last after the page is visible and clickable, some users are still affected. So now these new ads are loading about 10 times faster than before. In our tests over dialup they only take a couple seconds, instead of the much longer time that some of the graphical banners would take.

If you're a dialup user and you have noticed a difference, I'd like your feedback. Please leave comments here. We'll also be running a formal survey in about another week, which will be linked from the login page and ask just a couple questions about the dialup experience. Please also participate in that and let us know what you think.

You should see something like this if you are on a dialup connection:


textad.gif

If you don't see text ads on dialup, we want to know that too.

UPDATE
The survey is up now, please click here to fill it out.

  |   Comments (4)

Discussion

Posted by: Greg   |   November 20, 2008 7:41 PM    |   (1)

Why are paying customers subjected to ads anyway? Ads are annoying and are best suited for free email services. As a paying customer of over 11 years and paying nearly $30.00/mo I don't think I should be subjected to ads.

Posted by: Erik   |   December 11, 2008 9:32 PM    |   (2)

Bravo Greg!
I echo your sentiment. and, add the fact that I make a point of not clicking any ads at all.....there is no deal that can be offered that will get me to click on an ad.....

Posted by: ann   |   January 13, 2009 9:17 PM    |   (3)

I am on dial up.. and i am still getting banner ads.. i use firefox..

also,, since i downloaded the last upgrade of fire fox.. now when i open an email.. i get an error:0 message before it opens.. can someone help me with that?,.. is it your new interface, or is it a fire fox thing?

We started a new test with text ads over dialup today, so you should see those now. This is not yet a permanent change.

We are investigating the issue you report, as we have had several reports like this with the latest Firefox update.

Email Guy


Posted by: joan   |   April 2, 2009 5:10 PM    |   (4)

please get rid of those banner adds. I get tired of seeing them download. I have dial-up

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