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AOL yesterday unveiled new versions of its AOL.com and AIM.com free e-mail services in which the images are turned off by default.

As a result, e-mailers can expect to see their open rates for messages delivered to AOL.com and AIM.com plummet.

"Mailers are going to be freaking out because their open rates are going to drop," said Deirdre Baird, chief executive of deliverability consultancy Pivotal Veracity.

The "open rate" is one of the more derided metrics in e-mail because it is impossible to know for sure how many e-mails in a given campaign get opened.

The reason: An e-mail is recorded as having been opened when the receiving computer calls for images from the sending machine. As a result, an e-mail with blocked graphics can be opened and not register as such. Likewise, and an e-mail displayed in a preview pain with graphics activated will register as having been opened when the user may have spent just enough time on it to delete it.

AOL's move is part of an industry-wide trend in which e-mail inbox providers, such as Yahoo! and Microsoft, are turning images off by default in their newly designed e-mail interfaces. The move is aimed at guarding against spam, viruses and malware.

As a result, e-mailers have been seeing their open rates plummet for some time.

Business-to-consumer marketers should be the most affected by AOL's new interface since they generally have more AOL users on their files. However, Baird said: "You'd be surprised. A lot of b-to-b people have Gmail, Yahoo!, Hotmail and AOL on their files."

It is unclear what percentage of AOL subscribers use AOL.com or AIM.com. However, Baird said: "One would assume [AOL.com] is the majority and probably will be the part that will grow, given they've [AOL] gone to free e-mail."

Images can be turned back on in AOL.com and AIM.com if the user turns the images on for the individual e-mail, indicates they always want graphics turned on for a particular mailer, or adds the sender to their address book.

Images from a particular mailer will also be turned on by default in the mailer is on AOL's so-called enhanced whitelist, a list of pristine e-mailers whose sending practices meet certain strict, but unpublished standards.