<p>Since Gmail's new tabbed format launched a few months ago, the response has been both positive and negative from users as well as email marketers. Last week, Gmail announced another major change: automatically displaying images within the body of all emails without a user selecting the "display images" button.</p><p>In this article, I'll explore this latest change and how it could affect email marketing for ecommerce companies.Why 'Display Images' Anyway?</p><p>Roughly 10 years ago, Internet service providers and email platforms started to automatically block all images within the body of emails by default. This was an effort to protect the recipient against unwanted spam and phishing scams from so-called "tracking pixels." To track an opens on emails, a small 11 pixel image is placed in the body, which registers the open when the image is downloaded. This is helpful to legitimate email marketers to track opens and overall effectiveness. But malicious spammers can use it to validate your email address and possibly target for the future.</p><p>Blocking images posed a challenge for email marketers. Email design thus shifted to making the email effective regardless if a recipient loaded the images, by using text-based HTML for headlines, alt text, and other techniques to help to convey the main message of the email without relying on imagesGmail Changes Image Downloads</p><p><a href="http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/62243-Gmail-to-Download-Images-by-Default-Affect-on-Ecommerce">Keep reading...</a></p><p>Read also:</p><p><a href="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2013/12/gmail-open-rates-tank-but-conversion-soar-go-figure.html">Gmail Open Rates Tank but Conversion Soar: Go Figure</a> (Marketing Pilgrim)</p><p><a href="http://racked.com/archives/2013/12/18/store-holiday-emails-going-unopend-thanks-to-gmail-change.php">Store Holiday Emails Going Unopened Thanks to Gmail Change</a> (Racked National)</p><p>Explore: <a href="http://news.google.com/news/more?ncl=d9dhgGqar0UHiqMgqLLUfMysjoIeM&ned=us">4 additional articles.</a></p>