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Old 11-01-2011, 06:16 PM   #166
Elfwreck
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Originally Posted by stonetools View Post
You make your points eloquently, EW, but the plain fact is that that ad-supported text has been around since the 19th C , in one form or another.Ad-supported magazines aren't going away anytime soon. The anamoly has been full-price,non-ad-supported novels , which weren't popular until well after WW2.
And have destroyed the ad-supported type. The ad-based print industries are dying. Magazine subscriptions & counter sales are shrinking, and advertising support for them is plummeting. There are increases in advertisements: in videos for online magazines. (Note that online mags with videos have found a substantial place in the market while "enhanced ebooks" have not. People don't want videos interrupting their novels.)

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Wouldn't this also apply to games and apps? Yet there are ad-supported games and apps. I believe that you are exaggerating thhe technical difficulties of displaying ads.
I don't know of any modern black & white video game settings. What games are supposed to play on computers, tablets, phones and e-ink displays after a single purchase? I'm not sure there are any that are supposed to play on a phone or a computer equally well, and don't know if iPhone apps transfer to iPads. I thought they were different enough that they had to be redesigned--which meant different ads.

Ebooks, OTOH, are downloaded to device-of-your-choice; there's no spot that says "click here for the phone version, and over here for the laptop version, and use this one if you're reading on e-ink." (That'd rather kill the whole Kindle, "just open your book from whatever device you've got handy" approach.)

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Now, I'm no techno geek (I wouldn't know a style sheet if it came up and bit me in the a$$) but it seems there is one type of ad that could work in this area-the simple, clickable text ad that Google uses. It would be unobstrusive and you put them in at regular intervals in the text. You would be able to put in quite a few of them- maybe as many as one per "page" (every 250-300 words or so. You click on them and you go to the company webpage. They wouldn't take you to the company web page if you weren't connected, but then, if you saw an ad you liked while you weren't connected, you could return to it later.
1) If they're underlined (or worse, highlighted), people will find an app to strip the underlining. Extra markup on the text counts as "extreme nuisance" for most readers. A lot of us strip out the underlining text on blogs that use keyword ads. If the code is hard to strip, people will just not buy those ebooks. It's *incredibly* disruptive to the reading process. Gmail's text ads are *not in the middle of the text.*

2) Not underlined = invisible; won't get seen; won't get clicked.

3) Nobody's going to return to an "ad they liked" in an ebook that was "an underlined word."

4) You're still not looking at the numbers: How much money are advertisers going to pay, to support the coding changes required in ebooks, and the right to be seen by ONE viewer? How much would you pay to have a link to your website-of-choice seen by ONE person?

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THe good thing about this type ad is that it would work well across many different types of screens and even in e-ink. Now it wouldn't be a silver bullet, but there are no silver bullets.
Adverts don't need a "silver bullet," but they do need a way to convince advertisers that they're getting their money's worth. If the goal is to take a $12 ebook and sell it to customers for $6, and convince advertisers to pay the other $6, those advertisers will have to believe they'll be getting more than $6 in return somehow.

From one reader. Maybe from six readers... who share access to a single credit card.

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This wouldn't work for the ad-hater, of course, so there would need to be both a full price, ad-free version and an ad-supported version, but if you use GMail, you could certainly read a novel with similar type ads without breaking out in spots.
Sure! A novel that put a single line of text ad in the top 5% of the screen would be fine! ... and after the first three pages I'd ignore it, just like I ignored headers in LRF ebooks.

Text ads are ubiquitous online because they're *cheap*. They're not paying for anything of substance; they're paying for the server drain of "free" services. The server drain per google search is, effectively, zero cost, but the server drain of ten million is noteworthy. Ads pay for that blip of not-quite-zero that the searches cost. If one person in a thousand clicks on an ad, and one in a thousand of those makes a purchase, the ad is probably profitable.

Ads that are intended to subsidize real purchases have to bring in real money. Advertisers aren't going to pay $1/reader for a single e-ink page somewhere in a novel, unless they believe that, on average, each reader will buy $1+ of goods or services from them.
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Old 11-01-2011, 07:12 PM   #167
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One of the reasons I rarely watch US TV is the ad content is approaching the 'prime' content in screen time.
(we won't go into how dumb most commercials are (unless they are really funny))
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Old 11-01-2011, 11:18 PM   #168
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Originally Posted by stonetools View Post
There's also been an even longer history of novels serialized IN magazines with ads. That alone should refute the notion that novels can only be read and enjoyed in an ad-free environment. As usual, people fall prey to the belief that what they are used to is what always was , will be, and should be.
Magazines, even with serialized novels, are not novels. They are different. There have been 150 years of so of magazines with serials in them...but this magazine model has not, in all this time, jumped to novels.

Pointing this out doesn't *refute* anything; it *proves* the exact opposite of your contention.

And again, absent any evidence or even cogent argument, you just *assert* by ad hominem argument that people who don't agree with you are Luddite stick-in-the-muds.

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Lots of things have been tried and failed, repeatedly even, until the right model comes along and succeeds. You may be completely right that ads in novels are impossible, but I don't think that this concept has to at all been "convincingly refuted" - just that it's difficult and that some folk hate the idea.
I just meant that your argument has been convincingly refuted. Not because people hate the idea, but because you haven't really made a good argument. Maybe one can be made - but it needs *numbers* to show it's economically feasible in the first place, and maybe some plausible explanation for why ads in novels will now succeed when they have always failed in the past.

Here's what I mean - the average CPM (cost per thousand impressions) for internet ads in the US is $2.50. That means that if 1000 people look at your ad, you make $2.50. If you sold 5,000 books, each with one ad that people looked at, you would make $12.50. That works out to $.0025 per book, or one cent per every 4 books sold. I don't really see a possibility of offering cheaper books to the public with this sort of ad rate - which is why magazines have hundreds of ads per issue.
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Old 11-02-2011, 04:31 AM   #169
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I think the original Post was made at Good e-Reader - http://goodereader.com/blog/e-book-n...t-a-good-idea/

the OP quoted some scraper blog that just harvests other peoples content.


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Many publishing companies are toying with the idea of building advertisements contained within books. The idea is that books can be sold at tremendously reduced costs or given away for free with the intention of making long term gains with making money on ad-clicks or people purchasing products. Would customers accept this?

The big advantage with advertisements being displayed within ebooks is the cost to the end user. It would encourage people to pirate less because they could get the official version for free and give the companies important data on downloads and customer demographics. Most users want to do the right thing and get the book via legitimate channels. A fair chunk of users would continue to purchase the ad-free books but the option to give it away with the ads embedded in the book might be a solid option.

.http://readerupdates.com/uncategoriz...t-a-good-idea/

pirate less? HA!!! i'd trip over myself running to pirate sites to get ad-free versions.
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Old 11-02-2011, 08:12 AM   #170
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Originally Posted by theducks View Post
One of the reasons I rarely watch US TV is the ad content is approaching the 'prime' content in screen time.
(we won't go into how dumb most commercials are (unless they are really funny))
I refuse to watch TV as it's being aired. I utterly detest commercials. Maybe once/year, for some odd reason, I find myself watching a show as it's aired. And am reminded how awful the experience is. It's not only the commercials themselves that I despise. Like theducks, I resent the cumulative time they consume.

I speak of TV programs that are interrupted by commercials. I don't mind PBS programs that have "ads" before and after the shows air.

With that as a guide, e-book ads that appeared at the front and back the book would be tolerable. But in-line advertisements? On the very pages I'm reading? Hell no.
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Old 11-02-2011, 09:26 AM   #171
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Old 11-02-2011, 10:21 AM   #172
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And have destroyed the ad-supported type. The ad-based print industries are dying. Magazine subscriptions & counter sales are shrinking, and advertising support for them is plummeting. There are increases in advertisements: in videos for online magazines. (Note that online mags with videos have found a substantial place in the market while "enhanced ebooks" have not. People don't want videos interrupting their novels.)
The first link you cite says that ad revenues at the CONDE NAST group of magazines plummetted in January 2011, not that ad revenues plummetted at magazines in general; the second link referred only to ad revenues at NEWSPAPERS. It is not really news that print media in general, and newspapers in particular , are having a hard time adjusting to technological change: that doesn't mean that the ad-supported model is going to vanish.

Again, the ad-supported model appears to work well for games and apps . I understandthat theremaybe sonme technical difficulties to transfer the model to ebooks, but even you concede the obstacles aren't insurmountable.

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If they're underlined (or worse, highlighted), people will find an app to strip the underlining. Extra markup on the text counts as "extreme nuisance" for most readers. A lot of us strip out the underlining text on blogs that use keyword ads. If the code is hard to strip, people will just not buy those ebooks. It's *incredibly* disruptive to the reading process. Gmail's text ads are *not in the middle of the text

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

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Adverts don't need a "silver bullet," but they do need a way to convince advertisers that they're getting their money's worth. If the goal is to take a $12 ebook and sell it to customers for $6, and convince advertisers to pay the other $6, those advertisers will have to believe they'll be getting more than $6 in return somehow.
I spoke in terms of of a $1-3 subsidy, not a $6 subsidy. In any case, this is
the nub. Is it worth it to advertisers .According to Adner and Vincent in the WSJ, it will be.

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But the lack of ads in paper books isn't because book-reading is sacred, Ron Adner and William Vincent argue. Companies don't advertise in books because there is no guarantee of when or whether the book will sell. That's all changing, they say:

In short, physical books can't compete with other print media for advertisers. Digital books can. With an integrated system, an advertiser or publisher can place ads across multiple titles to generate a sufficient volume. Timeliness is also possible, since digital readers require users to log in to a central system periodically.
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.
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Old 11-02-2011, 11:20 AM   #173
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Originally Posted by stonetools View Post
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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.
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Old 11-02-2011, 12:45 PM   #174
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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.
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.
Let's face it, you just don't want ads in ebooks-any ebooks, even if there is a full price, ad free version where you wouldn't have to see them. That's pretty much what it comes down to.
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.


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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.
For the frugal buyer, ANY subsidy might be welcome. You and I fortunate in that (1)we can pay full price for the content we like , (2)don't have to rely on income from writing to pay our bills. Others may not be so fortunate. Its a lot easier to dismiss the ad-supported option if you are not in the posituion of the unfortunate.
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 .

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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.
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.

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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.
If there's money to be made, these things will get re-negotiated and items will be appropriately priced. That's what lawyers, buyers, sales personnel, and ad men are for.
Am I saying that this is easy to do? Nope. If it was, it would have been done already. It will be done, not because it is easy or hard , but if its PROFITABLE. 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.
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Old 11-02-2011, 02:24 PM   #175
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Just as a point of "irritation reference" one of the first things I turned off was the silly "What others have highlighted." Good heavens, that underlined and notation thing bugged me. It was very distracting to be reading along and have something underlined and a little number. I thought it was an author notation/reference before I realized what the thing was. Boy was I glad it was possible to turn that off.
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Old 11-02-2011, 02:28 PM   #176
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Here's what I mean - the average CPM (cost per thousand impressions) for internet ads in the US is $2.50. That means that if 1000 people look at your ad, you make $2.50. If you sold 5,000 books, each with one ad that people looked at, you would make $12.50. That works out to $.0025 per book, or one cent per every 4 books sold. I don't really see a possibility of offering cheaper books to the public with this sort of ad rate - which is why magazines have hundreds of ads per issue.
That analysis is for the generic web ad- not for an ad in an ebook, that may be generated from an analysis of the reader's purchasing history. That would make it far more valuable to the advertiser.
Another kind of ad may be what I originally spoke of -the Kindle Special Offers. These would come from Amazon and its partners. These "ads" seem to be far more attractive to consumers, if THIS THREAD is anything to go by.
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Old 11-02-2011, 05:10 PM   #177
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Originally Posted by stonetools View Post
That analysis is for the generic web ad- not for an ad in an ebook, that may be generated from an analysis of the reader's purchasing history. That would make it far more valuable to the advertiser.
Another kind of ad may be what I originally spoke of -the Kindle Special Offers. These would come from Amazon and its partners. These "ads" seem to be far more attractive to consumers, if THIS THREAD is anything to go by.
I was given the KSO as a gift. I've been woefully disappointed in the deals. I've only had the Kindle a month, but I've yet to find or see any deal that was interesting to me. Granted, I do read a lot, so the books for a dollar generally has yielded books I already own, already tried or already read. (Or wasn't interested in at all.) The horror books--nothing there to interest me. The other offers? I don't watch movies, I have more than enough music, I make my own soap (thanks anyway, Dove) and I don't need headphones. I'm HOPING there is an Amz gift cert to take advantage of soon (spend 10 get 5 or whatever.) But so far, it's a goose-egg. Obviously mileage varies.

Oh--and Amazon already puts ads at the back of each book: People who enjoyed this also bought...and then lists 3 or so books. Of course many people don't page far enough to even see it, but it's there. I haven't paid it any mind other than to notice it.
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Old 11-02-2011, 06:38 PM   #178
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Originally Posted by stonetools View Post
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.

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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.

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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.

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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.)

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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.
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Old 11-02-2011, 07:54 PM   #179
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Originally Posted by stonetools View Post
That analysis is for the generic web ad- not for an ad in an ebook, that may be generated from an analysis of the reader's purchasing history. That would make it far more valuable to the advertiser.
Another kind of ad may be what I originally spoke of -the Kindle Special Offers. These would come from Amazon and its partners. These "ads" seem to be far more attractive to consumers, if THIS THREAD is anything to go by.
I'm not sure what you mean by a "generic" web ad. That CPM is the average for all web ads. All ads are targeted - ads that appear on ESPN.com are going to be different than ads that appear on flowers.com. Some ads use tracking cookies to be even more targeted. All of these are included in the average, as is the fact that ads on some websites (like those aimed at people interested in purchasing cars) are going to be able to charge more for ads.

I'm not at all certain that ads in ebooks are inherently more valuable than other internet ads. It is not obvious to me that an ad in a Jack Reacher or David Weber or Anthony Trollope book is worth more than an ad on edmunds.com (a website that reviews cars). At least you know the edmunds visitor is interested in buying a car. What is the Trollope reader interested in? Vacations to the UK? A carriage? Equipment for the sadly neglected English pastime of lawn howling? :-)

Based on this, I'm don't see e-book ads as being more lucrative than conventional ads.

The next issue you raise is whether the ads would be more valuable if they are generated from an analysis of the reader's purchasing history. This is really only relevant to Amazon; I don't think that any other e-book retailer would have much that was really of value except perhaps to people advertising books. And I can imagine the outrage if Amazon changed its privacy policy to permit the use of your ten year history of purchases with Amazon to sell ads to you. People would not stand for it, and I don't think Amazon would cut their own throat either by alienating their customers *or* by sharing valuable customer data that they have with others.

And even if they did, the economics are still bad. Even if you could make an e-book ad worth ten times as much as the average CPM, we're still only talking 2.5c per book. Sell ten highly targeted ads tailored to you specifically and we're still only talking a quarter per book. Sell 100 highly targeted ads based on your unique purchasing history and the $14.99 book is now selling for $12.49. Still not a huge deal considering the 100 ads you'll have to deal with...and the book is only that cheap if *all* of the ad revenue is passed on to the customer.

So I don't see it.
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Old 11-02-2011, 11:35 PM   #180
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If the book was free with ads I would consider reading it. But generally I think it's a bad idea.
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