[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by stonetools

First of all, you're going to have to decide whether ads at the top of the page are eminently ignorable or horribly disruptive-you've said both.

Single line of text ads at top of page: just fine, not disruptive, ignorable. (Requires a change of firmware; neither epub nor mobi support headers or footers, although ereaders could be adapted to allow them.)

Ads intermingled with text, by highlighting or underlining words: horribly disruptive.

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.

Impossible to design: no.
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.

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 .

The indie author is very unlikely to catch advertiser interest. They have to believe she'll sell enough copies to be worth the hassle of setting up a contract & payment schedule with.

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.

If there's money to be made, these things will get re-negotiated and items will be appropriately priced.

That's the issue: is there money to be made? As in, will people who buy the ad-subsidized products, also buy whatever's being advertised?

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.)

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.

They're only fresh & relevant if the customer reads the book soon after the ad is loaded. A book downloaded now, and read three months from now on vacation, won't have current ads.

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.