Microsoft is aggressively rolling out ads to Outlook mobile users.Last week, Apple hinted that it would start showing ads in first-party apps like Books and Podcasts. Now, Microsoft’s popular email client Outlook seems to be heading in the same direction.
In case you don’t know, the Outlook mobile app has two ways of organising the inbox. If you choose the ‘Focused’ tab, the app will only show you important emails. To see all emails, users have to head over to the ‘Other’ tab. Earlier, Microsoft had put ads in the ‘Other’ tab for free users. But. according to a recent report by The Verge, Microsoft is bringing ads to the ‘Focused’ tab as well.
The ads appear on the top of the inbox and look like legitimate emails with a small label on the right side indicating they are ads. Clicking on the email-like ad will open a link in the in-app browser to display the content, similar to what Instagram does.
Even though users are able to swipe away or remove the ads, they do come back in the same place after a short period of time. Unsurprisingly, many have bombarded the Microsoft Outlook iOS app store page with negative or one-star reviews.
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Right now, the only way to remove ads from the Microsoft Outlook mobile app is to buy the Microsoft 365 subscription. The personal subscription that allows only one person to use the service costs Rs 4,899 per year whereas the family subscription that allows up to six users is priced at Rs 6,199 per year in India.