AOL Instant Messaging Survey Lights The Way For New Marketing Opportunities

MediaDailyNews writes:

Instant messaging (IM) is now a mainstream communication platform for Web users, according to new data collected by America Online and Opinion Research Corporation, and the new usage figures are prompting the world's largest Internet Service Provider to aggressively market the Instant Messaging client as a unique opportunity for marketers.

The article talks to directly to a for-fee service called "Expressions" that will allow AIM users to customize their client (and allow AOL to benfit from both sides of the deal), but it's clearly the first step into widespread marketing to the IM population.

I spoke to AOL last week about bots, in preperation for one i'm working on for a film coming up, and they are on board their also, although the terms are still much less defined. I'm certaimnly glad to be in the loop though.