Microsoft Outlook is a solid emailing app on iOS and Android, but Microsoft might be getting a little too aggressive with one part of it. To their frustration, users have noticed that Microsoft is now rolling out more ads to Outlook mobile, as a possible way to try and push the premium Microsoft 365 subscription.

Outlook on mobile already had two layout options for setting either a focused inbox with two categories (focused and other) or a single inbox with all emails. In these cases, users without a paid Microsoft 365 subscription always saw ads that looked like actual emails in the "other tab." You can see a sample in the tweet below.

Yet, now, it seems as though Microsoft is pushing ads to the view with the single inbox, as well. This addition makes it harder to avoid seeing ads in Outlook without a Microsoft 365 subscription. The Verge covered this news initially, and Microsoft's official response from a spokesperson confirms the changes. The company mentioned a way to avoid seeing ads.

“For free users of Outlook, ads are shown in their inbox and they can choose to enable the ‘Focused inbox’ feature if they would like to see ads only in the ‘Other’ inbox"

You can easily dismiss these inbox ads if you please by swiping them away, but they'll eventually come back. But as simple as a change seems to make, Microsoft isn't alone when it comes to these types of ads in email apps. Google and Yahoo also do this in their web-based experiences where you see small banner ads in your inbox.

To get the ad-free Outlook mobile experience, you can subscribe to Microsoft 365. A yearly subscription can be purchased for $100 a year for a family or $70 a year for a personal account, or at a monthly rate of $10 a month or $7 a month, respectively. If subscriptions aren't an option, then other emailing apps without ads are available on iOS and Android.

Source: The Verge