LONDON (Brand Republic) – AOL has started selling third-party advertisements on its instant messaging service and ICQ messaging service as it comes under regulatory pressure to integrate its messaging services with those of is rivals.
The FCC is due to rule tomorrow on the AOL/Time Warner merger. The integration of the AOL messaging service had been lobbied for by rivals AT&T, Excite@Home, Microsoft and Yahoo!.
Advertising banners from companies such as Telefonica, electrified.com and Sony Pictures take the place of AOL house ads promoting the ISP’s other services and subscriptions packages.
AOL Instant Messenger and ICQ boast around 140m registered users. AOL is currently playing down the emergence of the ads, saying that it is an experiment and does not contribute much to its revenues.
www.aol.com