11-01-2011, 06:16 PM | #166 | |||||
Grand Sorcerer
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Ebooks, OTOH, are downloaded to device-of-your-choice; there's no spot that says "click here for the phone version, and over here for the laptop version, and use this one if you're reading on e-ink." (That'd rather kill the whole Kindle, "just open your book from whatever device you've got handy" approach.) Quote:
2) Not underlined = invisible; won't get seen; won't get clicked. 3) Nobody's going to return to an "ad they liked" in an ebook that was "an underlined word." 4) You're still not looking at the numbers: How much money are advertisers going to pay, to support the coding changes required in ebooks, and the right to be seen by ONE viewer? How much would you pay to have a link to your website-of-choice seen by ONE person? Quote:
From one reader. Maybe from six readers... who share access to a single credit card. Quote:
Text ads are ubiquitous online because they're *cheap*. They're not paying for anything of substance; they're paying for the server drain of "free" services. The server drain per google search is, effectively, zero cost, but the server drain of ten million is noteworthy. Ads pay for that blip of not-quite-zero that the searches cost. If one person in a thousand clicks on an ad, and one in a thousand of those makes a purchase, the ad is probably profitable. Ads that are intended to subsidize real purchases have to bring in real money. Advertisers aren't going to pay $1/reader for a single e-ink page somewhere in a novel, unless they believe that, on average, each reader will buy $1+ of goods or services from them. |
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11-01-2011, 07:12 PM | #167 |
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One of the reasons I rarely watch US TV is the ad content is approaching the 'prime' content in screen time.
(we won't go into how dumb most commercials are (unless they are really funny)) |
11-01-2011, 11:18 PM | #168 | ||
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Pointing this out doesn't *refute* anything; it *proves* the exact opposite of your contention. And again, absent any evidence or even cogent argument, you just *assert* by ad hominem argument that people who don't agree with you are Luddite stick-in-the-muds. Quote:
Here's what I mean - the average CPM (cost per thousand impressions) for internet ads in the US is $2.50. That means that if 1000 people look at your ad, you make $2.50. If you sold 5,000 books, each with one ad that people looked at, you would make $12.50. That works out to $.0025 per book, or one cent per every 4 books sold. I don't really see a possibility of offering cheaper books to the public with this sort of ad rate - which is why magazines have hundreds of ads per issue. |
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11-02-2011, 04:31 AM | #169 | |
Nameless Being
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I think the original Post was made at Good e-Reader - http://goodereader.com/blog/e-book-n...t-a-good-idea/
the OP quoted some scraper blog that just harvests other peoples content. Quote:
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11-02-2011, 08:12 AM | #170 | |
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I speak of TV programs that are interrupted by commercials. I don't mind PBS programs that have "ads" before and after the shows air. With that as a guide, e-book ads that appeared at the front and back the book would be tolerable. But in-line advertisements? On the very pages I'm reading? Hell no. |
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11-02-2011, 09:26 AM | #171 |
frumious Bandersnatch
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I read this a couple of days ago: http://strips.orsonsfarm.com/usacres...1987-04-28.gif
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11-02-2011, 10:21 AM | #172 | ||||
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Again, the ad-supported model appears to work well for games and apps . I understandthat theremaybe sonme technical difficulties to transfer the model to ebooks, but even you concede the obstacles aren't insurmountable. Quote:
IF you are an ad hater, they're incredibly disruptive, and so you avoid them by buying the full price version. If you are ad-tolerant, they're not so disruptive. Once again, all ebook buyers aren't you. Historically, and even in the present day, people have enjoyed fiction in settings where there are a lot more than one text ad per page. Quote:
the nub. Is it worth it to advertisers .According to Adner and Vincent in the WSJ, it will be. Quote:
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11-02-2011, 11:20 AM | #173 | ||||||
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The sales options alone would be nightmarish... would Amazon list the book twice, once with & once without ads? How would they label the ad version to avoid a ridiculous number of returns? Would some stores have the ad version, and others have the "normal" version? The logistics issues are not minor, here; advertising succeeds or fails by good management of the subtle details most of the public doesn't pay attention to. Quote:
People will indeed accept ads at the beginning or ends of ebooks--but they won't read them, and advertisers aren't going to pay $1-3 of the desired list price for the right to be clicked past like the copyright statement page. Quote:
The iPad is the only platform that has enough control of reader experiences to really implement ads... and I notice that Apple's never released iBookstore sales numbers. Also: Under agency pricing, ebooks have to be the same price everywhere. (Well, they don't have to, but Amazon & Apple both have contracts that allow them to lower prices to match the ones elsewhere.) If the ad version is $10 at the iBookstore, Amazon will lower the $13 version to $10, unless the entire agency contract is renegotiated first. The technical and logistical issues are not handwavable. They are the essence of the problem--and they'll need to be fixed by the publishers & bookstores, and offered to advertisers; advertisers aren't going to (cannot, because they don't have access to the programs) fix them. |
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11-02-2011, 12:45 PM | #174 | ||||
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Let's face it, you just don't want ads in ebooks-any ebooks, even if there is a full price, ad free version where you wouldn't have to see them. That's pretty much what it comes down to. Is it IMPOSSIBLE to design ebooks so what you could put ads at the edges of the story? I'm betting it is possible. Would it be worth it for Apple , Google, or Amazon to develop such technology and offer it to advertisers, along with cooperating authors and publishers? I think so. Quote:
In any case, I think that its the indie author, who prices her book at $2.99 or less, would be most interested in this , at least at first. Such an author would be on the look out for any additional source of income . Quote:
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Am I saying that this is easy to do? Nope. If it was, it would have been done already. It will be done, not because it is easy or hard , but if its PROFITABLE. And since ebook ads are much more attractive than pbook ads to the advertiser in terms of freshness and relevance to the consumer, it just might be. |
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11-02-2011, 02:24 PM | #175 |
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Just as a point of "irritation reference" one of the first things I turned off was the silly "What others have highlighted." Good heavens, that underlined and notation thing bugged me. It was very distracting to be reading along and have something underlined and a little number. I thought it was an author notation/reference before I realized what the thing was. Boy was I glad it was possible to turn that off.
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11-02-2011, 02:28 PM | #176 | |
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Another kind of ad may be what I originally spoke of -the Kindle Special Offers. These would come from Amazon and its partners. These "ads" seem to be far more attractive to consumers, if THIS THREAD is anything to go by. |
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11-02-2011, 05:10 PM | #177 | |
Maria Schneider
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Oh--and Amazon already puts ads at the back of each book: People who enjoyed this also bought...and then lists 3 or so books. Of course many people don't page far enough to even see it, but it's there. I haven't paid it any mind other than to notice it. |
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11-02-2011, 06:38 PM | #178 | |||||
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Ads intermingled with text, by highlighting or underlining words: horribly disruptive. Quote:
Impossible to implement in today's ebook marketplace: yes. They'd have to design firmware and possibly hardware to support the ads, which means that everyone who's happy with their current ereader is not a customer for these new books. They'd have to wait for those people to update their devices--and convince them to buy the ad-compatible devices. If Amazon does it, the device won't support epub. If Apple does it, you won't be able to load your own ebooks into the same program that manages purchased ones. If Google does it, it'll require constant internet to be used. Maybe not. Maybe they'll pick a new direction, and support buyer choices for how to use their devices. But there's no indication that any of these companies want to allow buyers to decide where to buy & how to store their digital content. Quote:
How does the advertiser verify how many copies have sold? (Another fine issue worthy of consideration, given the accounting shenanigans mainstream publishers have pulled with royalty statements.) What info do they track from those sales? Big publishers are more likely to be in a position to offer them the data they want; indie authors selling through Smashwords and Lulu can't offer them buyer data. Because its not done immediately doesn't mean, "It will never be done". Heck, it may take several more years before all the stars are aligned. Companies like Apple, Google, and Amazon are playing thhe long game. Frankly, I've little doubt that folks at every one of those companies are working on the concept. Quote:
Magazines manage by having a sharply targeted audience; the ads that run in Cosmo are not the same ads that run in Track & Field or Time. But *any* of those readers might buy the next Percy Jackson ebook... or might be buying it for their 12-year-old child. If they're planning on reading it themselves, the advertiser wants to aim the ads at their buying history--which means they need access to that history. If they're buying it for a child, they want ads that are compelling for teenagers. (There are no online buying histories for teenagers, because teenagers don't have credit cards.) Quote:
And no, that's not everyone... but each person who does that, throws off the value of the advertising. That's not an "every person" occurrence, but it's not an extreme rarity either. And we've dodged around the number of people who buy ebooks, strip the DRM, and read them on a different device. The software that strips DRM can easily be adapted to strip ads--and we don't have any laws against stripping advertising. DRM-strippers might even be allowed to advertise if they can claim their purpose is obviously not filesharing, but ad removal for personal use. Advertisers will want to be assured that the ads can't by bypassed or removed without being read. There's no way to honestly claim that on any platform other than the iPad's walled garden. |
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11-02-2011, 07:54 PM | #179 | |
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I'm not at all certain that ads in ebooks are inherently more valuable than other internet ads. It is not obvious to me that an ad in a Jack Reacher or David Weber or Anthony Trollope book is worth more than an ad on edmunds.com (a website that reviews cars). At least you know the edmunds visitor is interested in buying a car. What is the Trollope reader interested in? Vacations to the UK? A carriage? Equipment for the sadly neglected English pastime of lawn howling? :-) Based on this, I'm don't see e-book ads as being more lucrative than conventional ads. The next issue you raise is whether the ads would be more valuable if they are generated from an analysis of the reader's purchasing history. This is really only relevant to Amazon; I don't think that any other e-book retailer would have much that was really of value except perhaps to people advertising books. And I can imagine the outrage if Amazon changed its privacy policy to permit the use of your ten year history of purchases with Amazon to sell ads to you. People would not stand for it, and I don't think Amazon would cut their own throat either by alienating their customers *or* by sharing valuable customer data that they have with others. And even if they did, the economics are still bad. Even if you could make an e-book ad worth ten times as much as the average CPM, we're still only talking 2.5c per book. Sell ten highly targeted ads tailored to you specifically and we're still only talking a quarter per book. Sell 100 highly targeted ads based on your unique purchasing history and the $14.99 book is now selling for $12.49. Still not a huge deal considering the 100 ads you'll have to deal with...and the book is only that cheap if *all* of the ad revenue is passed on to the customer. So I don't see it. |
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11-02-2011, 11:35 PM | #180 |
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If the book was free with ads I would consider reading it. But generally I think it's a bad idea.
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