[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by stonetools

Again, the ad-supported model appears to work well for games and apps . I understand that there may be some technical difficulties to transfer the model to ebooks, but even you concede the obstacles aren't insurmountable.

The tech obstacles aren't insurmountable, but the economic issues make them not worth bothering with.

IF you are an ad hater, they're incredibly disruptive, and so you avoid them by buying the full price version.

If you're a story-lover, they're incredibly disruptive. Randomly underlined or highlighted words distract from the story. Ads on the *edges* of the story would be fine--headers or footers. But most ebook formats don't support headers or footers; they're scrolling, rather than page-based, formats.

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.

Name the medium where people have tolerated ads in the middle of the text. Especially, text they've paid several dollars to read.

I spoke in terms of of a $1-3 subsidy, not a $6 subsidy.

It'll flop horribly, then. $12.99 for the "normal" version, and $10.99 for the ad-infected version? Won't get buyers. Ads-in-books is such a hot-button negative concept that it'd need a lot of appeal to get over the kneejerk reaction. "We'll use these to drop the price to... more than you would've paid by Amazon's old bestseller system" is not going to be the successful sales pitch.

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.

In any case, this is the nub. Is it worth it to advertisers .According to Adner and Vincent in the WSJ, it will be.

Saying, "we're sure advertisers will want in on this!" is not the same as "we have advertisers who are willing to pay for access through this medium!" That article is more than a year old; we now have Kindle lending books, an ad-supported *device* purchase, and more wifi readers... and still, no price-affecting ads in ebooks. No internal ads in ebooks.

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.

You can also tailor the ads to a reader's online purchasing history as well. The combination makes ebook ads a lot more attractive to an advertiser.

Only within a store, and with gaps. If a person buys romances from Amazon and science fiction from Baen, Amazon is missing a good portion of their sales history. If a person buys romance ebooks from Amazon for their aunt who doesn't even have a computer but got a Kindle last Christmas, the focused advertising will be exceptionally useless.

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.