Who said PDF documents didn't serve any purpose (well, except to make it difficult to read on devices with small screens)? Eager to tap into the growing market for online advertisement, Amazon is now teaming up with Yahoo's ad service to deliver contextual ads to PDF documents. From the
Wall Street Journal:
Quote:
|
Now, publishers will be able to show ads alongside their PDFs without selling and inserting the ads themselves, by uploading the PDF content to Adobe's Web site to ad-enable it, then distributing the PDFs as they previously did -- an easier and less costly option. Advertisers, meanwhile, can use Yahoo's existing self-service ad system to buy text ads that will run in a panel to the right of the PDF, when it is viewed in Acrobat or Reader. Yahoo will use the text of the PDF to place contextual ads that are relevant to the subject matter of the PDF -- similar to the text ads that run in blogs, for instance.
|
If you are a publisher and want to join the current beta test, go to
this webpage for sign-up.
Don't place your bets just yet, but maybe, and I am really just fantasizing here, prices for e-books will further go down as publishers will happily embrace this service as a new source for income.
The question is: As a consumer, will you accept ads in e-texts if this means you've to pay less for content?
Update: Thanks to John for sending us these additional links.
Adobe Labs,
FAQ (PDF),
Sample