14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft Outlook is one of the best, if not the best, email clients currently available on mobile devices, but a recent change in the app could force many users to begin looking for alternatives.
A report from MSPU reveals that Microsoft has started displaying inbox ads in the Android version of Outlook, and by the looks of things, this only happens for non-Office 365 subscribers.
In other words, if you’re using Outlook with a free Microsoft account, your corporate email, or any other provider, there’s a chance such ads could show up in your inbox as well.
The ads can be removed by swiping left, just like deleting an email, but they could return after relaunching the app.
Similar ad experiences on other platforms
At this point, Microsoft hasn’t yet offered a statement on these ads, but they could very well be just an experiment that the company is running on a limited number of devices. I’m not seeing any ads in the Outlook app on my Android device running the latest version of the email app.
This isn’t the first time Microsoft brings ads to Outlook, and the company has previously experimented with a similar idea in the Windows 10 version of the email client too. It’s not known, however, if the iOS version of Outlook shows ads or not, but I’m not seeing any on my iPhone either.
Furthermore, ads have been there in the web-based version of Outlook for a long time, so some believe the software giant could expand this push to all free accounts.
I’ve reached out to Microsoft to ask for more information about these ads in Outlook mobile and will update the article when and if an answer is offered.