Major ISPs' preference for text instead of html email is harming marketers, said Jay Schwedelson, corporate VP of list brokerage firm Worldata, at the Annual Catalog Conference in Florida yesterday, DM News reports. "We're entering a text world, which is terrible for us as marketers," he is quoted as saying. Users increasingly cannot view part or all of their messages because images will not automatically display. In the case of Google's Gmail, only relevant text ads from advertisers in its AdSense program do so. Graphics and information within emails - even if the recipient has opted in for the message - may not display. While Gmail and MSN's Hotmail are the biggest "culprits," Yahoo is moving to a similar system, according to Schwedelson. Marketers should tell subscribers to choose "display images" in their Gmail accounts, he said, to allow viewing of email images from domains they designate.
