For those that use an @aol.com email address, you might have noticed an email that appeared to be spam, but it wasn’t. It came from the sender "FooterSettlement" with subject line "OFFICIAL NOTICE OF PENDENCY OF CLASS ACTION AND PROPSED SETTLEMENT", and looked like this:

This is not spam. In short, what it means is that you now have the ability to opt out of footer advertisements in the emails you send. All you have to do it login to your AOL Mail first, then go to the web address http://footer.aol.com and simply uncheck the box, like this:

..then click the Save button.

From that point, no footer ads will be sent in the mail you send from your AOL email account.

It’s about time.

If you use AIM for instant messaging, any AIM account has the ability to send email. Your email address would be your-AIM-screen-name@aim.com. This has the same ability to opt out of footer ads just like @aol.com addresses do. To access and start using mail for an AIM account, the address to go to is http://webmail.aol.com. Login using your AIM credentials.

Are footer ads in outgoing emails good revenue generators anymore?

No. In order for free email providers to keep existing users and moreover attract new ones, the content of the communication sent to and from people must be absolutely ad-free. The biggest reason for this is SMS (Short Message Service) compatibility. Many of us use our email to send in the form of a short text message to cell phones. An email system that forces footer ads on all outgoing mail literally prevents you from sending any SMS at all, due to the fact you trip the 180-character-or-less limit every time you attempt to send a message.

Yahoo! Mail hasn’t had any footer ads on outgoing mail for some time and Gmail never has. Hotmail/Windows Live Mail does but only if you use the free web-based version. However I’m certain Hotmail will eventually drop the footer ads as well; it’s only a matter of time.

Any free email provider today that uses footer ads on outgoing messages is, pun intended, shooting themselves in the foot. Ad-supported free email should show ads in the web interface only and nowhere in the body of any message. This allows the user to send mail to anybody on any device, including mobile devices, without restriction.

At present, the most SMS-friendly free email providers are Google, Yahoo! and now AOL. Hotmail isn’t SMS-friendly only for the reason their free web-based version forces footer ads on outgoing messages. You can get around this by using the Windows Live Mail email client (mail sent from the client does not include footer ads at all) or by having a Hotmail Plus account, but it would be nice if Microsoft followed the lead of Yahoo! and AOL and dropped the footer crapola altogether.

The time for footer ads in email is over. The companies who choose to remain with it will have their users abandon the service in favor of footer-free email.

Buying advertising online is certainly a pretty guaranteed way to build up not only traffic on the Internet, but also your brand. And many times, building brand awareness is every bit as valuable as building raw traffic numbers to your website.

If you’re going to explore the area of advertising, though, you need to be aware of some basic terms. This is true whether you want to puts ads on your website for revenue reasons or whether you want to purchase advertising for your website.

Below are some basic terms:

• Impression. An impression is any single time an ad is displayed on a website.
• CPM – Cost per thousand impressions. When buying advertising on a CPM basis (or charging on a CPM basis), you are talking about a certain fixed cost for every 1,000 impressions of the ad.
• CPC – Cost per click. Regardless of how many times the ad is displayed, charge will be based on the number of times the article is clicked on. For the advertiser, this is good because they are only paying for an ad’s performance and actual clicks on the ad.
• PPC – Pay per click. The method of paying for advertising where the advertiser only pays when a user actually clicks on an ad. As you might have guessed, networks that pay on a PPC basis will be talking about CPC, which is the cost per click (see above). PPC ads are open to abuse because of click fraud.
• Conversion. A conversion is where the person clicking on the ad actually does what the advertiser wants them to do (buy a product, sign up for a mailing list, etc). So, the advertiser puts out an ad. That ad is designed to entice the person to do something. If the person clicks on the ad, they visit a website. If the person then does what is desired from them while on that website, that counts as a conversion.
• CPA – Cost per Action. Cost per action is where the charges are based on the number of actual conversions. Ads of this type are common in affiliate programs where pay is based on commission.
• Contextual advertising. This is advertising which appears in context with other content, usually using keywords to determine the ads. Google Adsense, for example, is contextual in that the ads that are displayed usually are related to the content they are displayed next to.

I have no doubt at all that we have a lot of business owners and marketing folks come by and visit PCMECH. Folks who could benefit from the large audience we have here.

If you are interested in:

• Growing your business
• Building more awareness for your brand

then I have an announcement for you.

PCMECH is now offering direct sponsorship opportunities.

This is an opportunity to turn the tides a little from being a reader of PCMECH to taking advantage of PCMECH to grow YOUR business and put your message in front of the thousands of people who come here every day.

In addition to the benefits I list on our advertising page, I will also highlight new sponsors on PCMECH with a blog post describing what your business does, your offer and a link to your site. I’ll introduce your business to PCMECH readers.

As an additional bonus, I will also include your business logo in our PCMECH Live streaming webcam feed so that our audience will be aware of your business and check you out for themselves.

So, not to get all “salesy” here, but I want to be clear what new sponsors can get here:

• Placement of your box banner or text link (depending on your package) on all pages of PCMECH.COM
• Your URL included in our weekly newsletter, sent every Monday.
• An introduction article here on PCMECH.COM to highlight your business to our audience
• Your logo rotated in our PCMech LIVE feed whenever we are on the air

This is new for PCMECH. Yes, we have had sponsors before, but never in a structured program like this. Slots are limited. I don’t know how long it will take to fill the available slots, but if this is something you’d like to do, I’ll just say the obvious…

Sooner the better.

For details, go to our PCMECH Advertising page.