With Fewer Paying Up, AOL.com Shifts to Free

With Fewer Paying Up, AOL.com Shifts to Free - New York Times

The campaign has been in development for months, ever since AOL's parent, Time Warner, decided to shift strategies (again) and offer at no cost much of the content and features that had been available only to subscribers of America Online. The reason is that despite all the elaborate previous changes to the subscription service, paying users continue to flee.

"It's about building AOL's audience to make money through advertising, e-commerce and search in a much bigger way than we're able to when we were focused only on the subscription service," said Kevin Conroy, executive vice president for AOL Media Networks in Dulles, Va.