Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
I get you, now, but there's one thing: E-books won't necessarily be read on online devices, so you can't depend on ping-backs to pass information along. Some readers, say, smartphones, may be able to handle an interactive ad, but a device like the Sony Reader being used away from its computer connection won't be able to click-through to the site. And some e-book software won't be able to handle links (I suppose that will be decided by whichever combo of hardware and software becomes popular.)
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I was thinking that a device like the Reader could save up the pings and send them when it was next online to get more books. Sure, people could defeat this system if they were especially concerned, but why bother? Another advantage is that this would track the ads, not the book content, which might help consumers feel better from a privacy perspective. I think it would depend on how much information was being collected (I think very little would be needed).
Regarding ad blockers-- note that they don't work on text ads.
This would encourage advertisers to keep their ads minimalist -- less annoying, and potentially more informative. I would still hope that most ads in fiction would be for other fiction by the same or similar authors. Click-through ads would be good, too, and again, an offline system could just save them up and click you through next time you're connected.
If I had the time (and the programming skills, but that amounts to the same thing in my case), I'd set up a system like this myself and try to get some authors interested, using Google Ads.