Advertisements in Ebooks-Good Idea?

[Apache]

Not No, But Hell No.
Apache

[ekster]

Originally Posted by VicLavigne

I really don't like ads in my reading material, but lets look at the big picture:

1. Magazines and newspapers are full of ads, and nobody is boycotting them
2. Television, radio, internet sites -- sponsored and paid by advertisers
3. Commercial-quality videos on YouTube and news sites now lead with advertisements
Vic

A lot of those ads do get boycotted though.

For Television, unless something is being aired for the first time, more and more people chose to download or stream a show/movie. No ads is a strong argument for many of them. Myself included. One of the best things about Netflix is that I do not waste an hour to watch a 40 minute episode.

For Internet, adblock, and similar aps/addons are very popular. People are doing everything they can to block those ads. Granted, they are becoming more and more annoying by flashing, popping up and taking over all your screen, etc. A lot of people also stop going to websites that force commercials before videos. It might not work for youtube, but I know a lot of people switched websites for news when certain news sites decided to force a commercial in front of every video.

And I am sure similar things will happen to magazines and newspapers in the near future as more of them go digital.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by jtdolphins

Maybe, just maybe, the ads could work. I just don't see how they could get enough clicks. I probably wouldn't go for them, but things change. Do people actually click on ads that are flashing on a webpage?

That's pretty much my thought. I haven't seen any suggestions of how to make ads *inside* ebooks (as opposed to "somehow inflicted on the reading device") make enough money for the advertiser to convince them to pay for a notable amount of the book's cost.

Given the array of devices ebooks are read on, ranging from 3" phones to 5" black-and-white e-ink to 10" tablets to personal computers, an ad would either have to work across all venues--or only be attached to ebooks sold for one type of device, sharply limiting the customer base.

The *idea* of ads isn't too bad, although a lot of us have kneejerk reactions against them because our first thoughts are always the worst ones we've seen. But the practical side has some pretty substantial problems, and none of the proponents of ads-in-ebooks have come up with a solution that's not "ad-based ebook customers will only buy from specific locations and read on approved devices."

It's also not clear if the agency pricing clusterf**k allows for the same book at a different price "with adverts"--can a publisher sell books at B&N for $13, but through the iBookstore for $8-with-rotating-ads?

An ad in an ebook isn't like an ad at the front page of a print book... you don't see it every time you open the book. Unless the programming's changed to force you to look at it again, it's a page-click to get past, and that's all. To make ads show up on every page, like the top corner, you need ebook formats that support that--and a way to not ruin the reading experience for people already on tiny screens.

I suspect advertisers & publishers will continue to try to figure out how to inflict ads on ebooks, and continue to fail to do so on any large commercial basis. Any ad minor enough to be non-intrusive to reading, lacks the ability to inspire sales that will convince the advertiser to pay for the book.

[Ravensknight]

Originally Posted by howyoudoin

Does the fact that the ads in paperbooks experiment never really took off not serve as a pointer in this case?

Truth! I used to read the Mac Bolan/Executioner books and they always had a big cardstock ad in the middle of the book to buy more books or buy guns or join some club or something. First thing I always did was remove the cardstock and throw it away.

And we don't see ads IN THE MIDDLE of paperbooks anymore. I'm fine with at the end like others have said, like the old scifi/fantasy books...

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

Adverts between chapters wouldn't really bother me, but I wouldn't want to see them onscreen all the way through. Product placement would probably work better though. "He lit his Silk Cut and sighed at the smooth flavour as he inhaled." Or "he opened up his Macbook Air and pondered how much better it was than his old Windows computer."

That is already with us. A few examples from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. Just a quick search for product names (this really struck me while I was reading it) turned up these:

Frode knew what he looked like and kindly collected him from the platform and led him straight to the warmth of his Mercedes.

He borrowed Frode’s Mercedes and drove through a snowy landscape to spend the afternoon with Detective Superintendent Morell. Blomkvist had tried to form an impression of Morell based on the way he came across in the police report.*

The artwork on the walls was reproductions and posters, of the sort found in IKEA.

All of it was from IKEA apart from the two comfortable and extravagant armchairs and a small end table—a concession to my upbringing, she liked to say.*

The rucksack contained her white Apple iBook 600 with a 25-gig hard drive and 420 megs of RAM, manufactured in January 2002 and equipped with a 14-inch screen.

The loss of her computer was depressing but not disastrous. Salander had had an excellent relationship with it during the year she had owned it. She had backed up all her documents, and she had an older desktop Mac G3 at home, as well as a five-year-old Toshiba PC laptop that she could use. But she needed a fast, modern machine.

Unsurprisingly she set her sights on the best available alternative: the new Apple PowerBook G4/1.0 GHz in an aluminium case with a PowerPC 7451 processor with an AltiVec Velocity Engine, 960 MB RAM and a 60 GB hard drive. It had BlueTooth and built-in CD and DVD burners.
Best of all, it had the first 17-inch screen in the laptop world with NVIDIA graphics and a resolution of 1440 x 900 pixels, which shook the PC advocates and outranked everything else on the market.

This of course became goldmine in book sales, not to mention film rights, but Larsson apparently had a backup plan.

[ekster]

Wow, I've seen placement ads before. I could accept the Mercedes and the IKEA part, thinking the author just thought it would fit or got a small kickback... but writing the release date and all the details of how many pixels and which processor in the laptop like a store ad is really over-kill. I'd definitely put away a book like that.

[HomeInMyShoes]

Originally Posted by stonetools

THe KSO model is based on precisely this idea and its an overwhelming success. If you see ads in ebooks, it will most likely be some form of this model, IMO. Lots of people disagree with me, though. See HERE.

Regardless, of what we believe, its likely that some sort of ad-supported ebook model will be tried.

Oh, I'm not doubting it will be tried. It will be tried. but the KSO isn't really the same as this. This is ads in the margins while you are reading the KSO is outside of actual reading. And I wouldn't buy one with ads in the margins, but I would buy a KSO. These are different infringements on the reading experience.

[stonetools]

Here's a Wall Street Journal article that discusses the issue.

One digital-book store, Wowio Inc., is making inroads selling ads in the e-books users download from its site onto, say, laptops or e-readers like Apple's iPad and Amazon's Kindle. Some Wowio e-books have three pages with promotions: an introduction and a closing page each with an ad, plus another full-page ad. The company also is experimenting with techniques to insert ads between chapters and to target ads using profile information that users submit to its website, says Wowio Chief Executive Brian Altounian.

The movie site Fandango is among the Los Angeles company's clients. Fandango is giving Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver's Travels," with three pages of Fandango promotions, to people who buy tickets on the site to the Jack Black movie "Gulliver's Travels," which opens on Christmas.

"It is not the kind of thing where you are reading and a video pops up on the screen," Mr. Altounian says. "If advertising gives access to content that is free or heavily subsidized, then most readers will accept it."

Wowio charges advertisers between $1 and $3 for each book downloaded and shares revenue with the publisher. The publisher determines how much of those ad dollars trickle down to the author.



Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...#ixzz1bj6EFGrV

[seajewel]

Originally Posted by VicLavigne

I really don't like ads in my reading material, but lets look at the big picture:

1. Magazines and newspapers are full of ads, and nobody is boycotting them
2. Television, radio, internet sites -- sponsored and paid by advertisers
3. Commercial-quality videos on YouTube and news sites now lead with advertisements

If ebooks ads are tactfully placed, and not excessive, then I would be fine with it, especially if it led to a free ebook or at least a very good discount. Just please, please keep it mute. I can't stand internet ads that are audible distractors.

Vic

I agree with this. I think ebooks are over-priced right now, and I don't "like" ads, but I don't see why they wouldn't necessarily work in a book. People pointed out that for music it doesn't play in the middle of the song.. well, no, but songs don't last for five hours each either. I find ads jarring, but I also find that I read far more than my income can support, so free ebooks and library services are incredibly important to me. If I can get lower-priced ebooks because of some tactfully-placed ads, then I would definitely consider that option.

[carld]

Originally Posted by stonetools

This was discussed a couple of times earlier. But then, so was DRM and ebook prices.

Ads have been in books in the past , contrary to myth. If ads can be done in a tasteful, non-intrusive fashion, and if the economics justify it, they will be in ebooks

I don't think it's possible to do advertisements inside the ebook itself in a non-intrusive fashion, especially not as described in the original post.

[Keryl Raist]

Originally Posted by taustin

There are already ads in books (e- and otherwise). They're called "product placement ads." Any time you read about a character drinking a Coke or driving a Ford, you can bet money changed hands to have that happen.

My characters drink Pepsi and Dr. Pepper, one drives a Toyota Camry, and several bands and books are also mentioned by name, in addition to trips to McDonalds and Starbucks. No one has paid me a cent for it. I just wanted to make sure the world they lived in was very real.

But, that is the sort of advertising, or say, just having terms, places, and things that you can click on, that wouldn't bother me. The idea of having a scene where a character does drink a Pepsi with a little hyperlink that can connect you to a Pepsi coupon might be interesting. The big thing is doing it so that it's not intrusive. I don't want to read page after page of hundreds of name brand items.

It's one thing if your spy asks for his martini made with Stoli. It's a whole other thing to add in a scene where he gets dressed and every item he's wearing has a tag on it. (But who knows, the chic-lit girls might really go for that.)

I'm also not terribly interested in seeing full page ads littered about in my books. Sure, one or two in the back about books by the same or similar authors, fine. Random stuff? Not so much.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by Hamlet53

That is already with us. A few examples from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. Just a quick search for product names (this really struck me while I was reading it) turned up these:

That was not product placement. Larssen was not paid for including the brand names (as should be obvious). He did it for versimilitude.

[HomeInMyShoes]

Originally Posted by Keryl Raist

My characters drink Pepsi and Dr. Pepper, one drives a Toyota Camry, and several bands and books are also mentioned by name, in addition to trips to McDonalds and Starbucks. No one has paid me a cent for it. I just wanted to make sure the world they lived in was very real.

But, that is the sort of advertising, or say, just having terms, places, and things that you can click on, that wouldn't bother me. The idea of having a scene where a character does drink a Pepsi with a little hyperlink that can connect you to a Pepsi coupon might be interesting. The big thing is doing it so that it's not intrusive. I don't want to read page after page of hundreds of name brand items.

The links work until almost every word is linked. I've seen some websites like this and it makes it virtually impossible to actually read and comprehend the page. There is too much push in our world and Internet these days and not enough pull.

[Croptop]

Originally Posted by kjk

I used to love the end ads about other books available from the publisher at the end of the old DAW science fiction novels-back in the old days it was one of the few places you could read blurbs about other related books.

^THIS!
I would have absolutely no problem with this type of advertising being inserted at the *end* of any and all ebooks that I purchased or borrowed from the library. But if the plan were to insert interstitial ads that disrupted my reading then I would have a big problem with it and would stop supporting any and all publishers that adopted the practice.

[Keryl Raist]

Originally Posted by HomeInMyShoes

The links work until almost every word is linked. I've seen some websites like this and it makes it virtually impossible to actually read and comprehend the page. There is too much push in our world and Internet these days and not enough pull.

Well, that's where one would hope the author/publisher would have some sense.

For example, I know I'd be willing to have 10ish linked terms in my book. Since I'm the publisher, I could take care of it to make sure it works that way. (Granted, no one is banging down my door to advertise in my books...)

Now, sure, Random House might decide that having every third word, and writing in extra scenes to add more words, linked is a brilliant plan. But my guess is their sales would drop.

One of my hopes for the indie book movement is that as more writing moves to the control of the author, that we'll see a more tailored and sensible approach to pricing and methods of making money off of books.