The WordAds team has now launched paid advertising in email subscriptions. This is a new channel for WordAds sites to increase earnings. This feature requires nothing from WordAds sites on WordPress.com. Site owners who want to opt out can simply make a support request. We plan to roll out to Jetpack Ads users as well.
Ads in email subscriptions contributes to WordAds’ mission to make advertising management simple for users. Email advertising is surprisingly complicated as users must setup an email ad server and strike deals with ad buyers.
You can be assured that the email advertising program is in compliance with privacy norms and regulations.
Email Ad Example:
WordAds 
This is an excellent addition to the ad program. Thank you.
That’s awesome. I hope next you will come up with alternative payment methods. There are already alternatives to PayPal, and apart from that I think you guys completely missed cryptocurrencies as a payment method. At least the established ones like Bitcoin or Ethereum. Not that I am totally against PayPal, but I think bloggers would profit from different payment options and now we just have one. Just my feedback.
So many Emails are blocked, If builtin php mail function used. But after some time every website require a proper email marketing option. WordPress hosting offers free email subscription option with easy setup. I think, this new ads option will rock. I really like to try it.
I do not want those ads in my emails. I requested to opt out and was told I can not. 😦 Here’s the response I got from the support team: “Thanks for writing, happy to help you.
I see that you currently have a site with a free plan and a domain attached. Third party ads help us subsidize the cost for sites on a free plan.
You will need to upgrade to a personal plan at least, from
https://wordpress.com/plans
to remove ads from the site as well as email updates sent to users.
Third party ads help us subsidize the cost for sites on a free plan.”
I am not happy 😦
Neisha,
Our support staffer was correct: there’s no way to opt out of these unless you have a plan. This way it works the same as it does for ads on your actual site.
Sorry I can’t be of more help here! 😦
Thanks, It’s a good addon to the subscription. I will try it.
tnx
Please eligible my site for wordads
According to our records, you have not applied for WordAds yet. You need to have at least a Premium plan in order to be eligible:
https://wordpress.com/plans/
Thanks!
This is excellent. How can I enable it on my site?
Kunal,
If your site already has WordAds, you don’t need to do anything. We’ll start inserting the ads automatically.
If you don’t yet have WordAds, we have instructions on getting started here:
Thanks! 🙂
I just saw my first ‘ads in an email’ today after reading a blog post about it from someone I follow.
How does the Ads team monitor the quality of ads?
I see three ads in the email I received – one advertises ‘Mother earns £16,409/month’ Come on! The ad is so obviously a scam designed to deceive the gullible.
I clicked the ad and it went to a blank page. I stripped out everything except the subdomain URL and got a 500 error and similarly with the main domain. Well, that’s good.
Another of the ads was for how to invest in bitcoin without buying bitcoin. It also led to a dead page – blank dot org – What is that about, I wonder?
My point being that WP.com states repeatedly that it supports community and the integrity of community in the democratisation of the Web.
Can you therefore put on your advertising sentry’ hat and guard the community for specious ads.
Ads like these don’t do anyone any favours – not least the WP.com readers who have sites of their own and wonder exactly what is being put out in their name.
David,
We’ve forwarded your feedback on to our ads partner, since we’ve also been getting some reports of a few bad ads on desktop browsers and mobile. It’s not yet clear why it’s happening, but we are working on it.
Thanks for your feedback. 🙂
Good to hear!
Not to mention the fact that people on a free plan can’t even opt-out of it. I had several readers telling me that they’re upset about the ads in mails.
I just realized the whole feature is pretty spammy. Ads in emails should die like popups.
I’ve always been ok with the fact that wp.com shows ads on my site, while I get free cloud hosting in return. I totally get that the service costs money, and I am finde if wp shows ads on my site. What I don’t like is if you guys start to annoy my readers with ads in emails, and if I might lose subsribers due to this. I also don’t like the idea that my notifications act as bridge to third-party sites,. because they might click on ads and land on third-party sites before they even open mine. In other words, all the energy I put into my site, is exploited by wordpress.com to forward readers to third party sites via my notifications.
Guys. This needs to stop, give us at least the option to disable it. Yes, also us free plan users. Ads in emails have never been a case until now… you basically changed the terms for us. We now have to accept it.
If you want my opinion in detail, take a look here: https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/please-disable-ads-in-email-notifications/
Agree with David Bennett. I have a Business .com account, so I contacted WP engineers to find out why these ads suddenly appeared in emails. We should have received advance notice.
And because these are not high quality ads (to say the least) I asked that they be removed. So no more scammy ads in my subscriber emails.