AOL abandons exclusivity in favor of ad-supported model

[Mntsnow]

The walls surrounding America Online's well-manicured gardens are crumbling.
In a move both risky and essential, AOL is abandoning its strategy of exclusivity and will free much of its music, sports and other programming to non-subscribers in hopes of boosting ad sales.

The decision could help the company counter declining subscriptions as Internet users move to high-speed connections. At least that's the plan.

The danger is that the bold new strategy will instead accelerate the erosion of AOL's core revenue source. Read more at UsaToday (http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2004-12-13-aol-east-of-eden_x.htm)

[Axel]

gee - what a shock - free , $10 a month - or go with aol and spend as much as $25 a month or more......and all those damned CD's they send out - I'd hazard a guess they use more production capacity than happy meal toys especially when they do a shipment in those nice metal CD tins from time to time..... heck - the bulk mail rate would go up if AOL didn't subsidize the system with sheer volume.... I've got zero sympathy or use for AOL myself.....

[a Bill]

Kind of makes sense. AOL has always depended heavily on advertising. They also recently bought an advertising company I was at one time employed by. This same company received many millions of dollars from AOL in the years before their purchase.

Even when advertising dollars 'dried up' a few years back, it was still fat city. It just was no longer glutinous fat city ;) Now advertising dollars are escalating once again so it only makes sense to go for them.