Advertisements in Ebooks-Good Idea?

[MrsJoseph]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

I do pay for TV in the UK, but at least it's for ad-free TV and radio from the BBC. (£145.50 at the moment, which is about £12.13/$20 per month.)

I do also get loads of ad-supported channels for 'free'.

You get ad free TV? Really? None at all? That must be great!

[seajewel]

When I lived outside of the U.S., there were no ads during shows, only between shows. It was a huge shock and a huge annoyance to come to the U.S. with ads inserted in the show. I still find it immensely annoying. However, when it comes to stuff like Netflix and Hulu, I appreciate that I have the opportunity to endure the ads for the sake of a large selection of shows at my convenience. and I watch so very little TV, but when I do, I appreciate that I have those options.

When it comes to books, I read voraciously and all the time, so the library has to be my best friend. Otherwise I'd be spending thousands of dollars on books (I read about 3-4 books a week), and I don't have that kind of income. If I had the option to "endure" ads in books, sure, it would be annoying, but I'd love to have access to a convenient e-book library-type system, like my current library, with a very limited selection), or very cheap books, with ads to support the authors/publishers.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by MrsJoseph

You get ad free TV? Really? None at all? That must be great!

None at all within programmes. The BBC do trail their upcoming programmes between shows.

I found US TV incredibly hard to watch, especially as there's no pause at all between programme and advert.

In the UK, commercial channels must follow strict rules on how they show advertising, one of which is: "Broadcasters must ensure that television advertising and teleshopping is readily recognisable and distinguishable from editorial content and kept distinct from other parts of the programme service. This shall be done by optical (including spatial) means; acoustic signals may also be used as well."

[JD Gumby]

Originally Posted by stonetools

Novels like "Crime and Punishment ", "David Copperfield" and " A Study in Scarlet" were originally serialized in ad-filled magazines.

...and then the ads went away when they were published as novels (except for, in modern editions, blurbs at the beginning and end for other books by that publisher and/or author), barring a brief period where no significant amount of money was made from placing easily-ignored inserts.

The big problem with ads in ebooks is the same as for ads on the 'Net: they won't be just ads, they will be used as a way to track and measure every single thing you do while the ebook is open and that information passed on to the advertisers.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by stonetools

I agree that this is the key point. Now I have no background in marketing, and possibly, EW, you do. I wonder how you can be so sure that ad support could not noticeably lower prices.

Ad support *for text* has been tried, over and over, and every method attempted has had limited success. Ad-supported media that worked for decades are failing; the magazine and newspaper industries are on the verge of collapse because ad-supported production costs aren't working like they used to: people aren't buying the advertised products enough to make it worth buying space on the page. Methods that have been tried online have been more failworthy than most, as advertisers attempted to use the rules of print on a medium that isn't as fixed.

The loop with TV is more difficult to trace, but we're still starting to see it: more ads and more invasive ads, for which people keep seeking better blocking technology.

Ebooks, unlike magazines, aren't left on the counter and thumbed through again when a person is bored. Nobody (almost nobody?) is going to re-open them just to see the ads. There's no easy "flip to that page I saw with the striking picture of the woman on a cliff, what was that about again?" *Maybe* the publisher will bookmark the ads--and *maybe*the buyer will be comfortable using the software to navigate bookmarks.

After all, it does so for games, TV shows, and apps, not to mention hardware like the KSO. Are you really trying to say that the ebook is the unique type of medium that ad support WOULDN'T lower prices for?

I'm saying that attempts to *insert* ads in novels have been monumental flops. Releasing novels piecemeal worked for quite a while... but the magazines that did that, have failed or are failing. The short-story print market, wonderfully suited for ad support, has almost collapsed. Advertisers are not convinced (for perfectly good reasons) that the people buying the stories, are going to buy the products shown next to them.

This is made worse in ebooks by the lack of control of the appearance of the ad. Try telling an ad exec, "it'll cost you a quarter per ebook we sell to include your ad, and you don't get to choose whether it's seen in color or not, or whether it's seen on a Kindle or a computer screen or a tablet or a phone. Make something that's equally compelling on all those devices."

An ad at every chapter break is possible without destroying the reading experience. So, maybe 15-20 ads? Let's call it 20; we assume publishers will encourage at least that many chapters to get the maximum result from the adverts. If a normally-$10 ebook is going to sell for $5 for the ad-supported version, that's $.25 each from those advertisers.

If the book sells 10,000 copies, that's $2,500 from each advertiser. Not many companies are going to deal with a CPM of $250. (I daresay, "none," because they don't even know when the ad will be viewed--if the book is bought & downloaded in April for a birthday, and not read for several months, the ad may no longer be relevant.)

Dynamic ad feeds could get around that problem--but limits the market to those people using cloud-based readers. That number is growing, but isn't everyone, and isn't likely to be. Do they just refuse to sell the book to people who don't have one of the approved devices? Sell it in the Sony store, but only to people with T1's or Daily editions, not to people with a 350?

Does the book not work if you're out of range when reading it? Get to chapter break, and it freezes until you get to a wifi spot?

The technical issues aren't insurmountable, but they're substantial, and advertisers aren't going to provide those answers. They're going to say, "how much will it cost us to have our ads seen by how many readers," and will agree to pay, or not, based on that answer.

Who do you think will be rewriting their firmware to force the readers to see ads they don't want? How will they manage to convince book buyers that the ads won't interfere with reading, but convince advertisers they'll increase sales?

The *easiest* way to put ads in ebooks is to sell them as individual apps: a package deal, book content & adverts all together, with whatever color, animation & sound the provider can put together to make the adverts interesting enough to not skip over.

...but then the market is just the app market, and they lose all those potential customers with e-ink readers, or who prefer ebooks on their computers.

"New James Patterson ebook: $12 at Amazon, or $6 app with ads for your iPad. But not for iPhones; for that, you need the $12 version."

Somehow, I don't see that being a successful sales pitch.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

None at all within programmes. The BBC do trail their upcoming programmes between shows.

They also charge a tax to TV owners. Some of the money to create shows is coming directly from viewers rather than advertisers. (Usually, I think that's the more civilized version. But it's worth noting that there's still a cost: US viewers get stuck with interruptions; UK viewers pay cash, which avoids those.)

[stonetools]

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.
Ad-supported TV has been there and shows no sign of dying away, despite the decades long existence of technological means to avoid ads completely.

The freemium model for games and software is firmly established and if anything growing. I just don't see the ad-supported model going away in any of those areas-if anything, quite the contrary. People like cheap, and will be willing to put up with ads if they can get a discount.

This is made worse in ebooks by the lack of control of the appearance of the ad. Try telling an ad exec, "it'll cost you a quarter per ebook we sell to include your ad, and you don't get to choose whether it's seen in color or not, or whether it's seen on a Kindle or a computer screen or a tablet or a phone. Make something that's equally compelling on all those devices."

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.

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.
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.

Who do you think will be rewriting their firmware to force the readers to see ads they don't want? How will they manage to convince book buyers that the ads won't interfere with reading, but convince advertisers they'll increase sales?

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.

[stonetools]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

They also charge a tax to TV owners. Some of the money to create shows is coming directly from viewers rather than advertisers. (Usually, I think that's the more civilized version. But it's worth noting that there's still a cost: US viewers get stuck with interruptions; UK viewers pay cash, which avoids those.)

Actually, there is some very good, no ads TV in the US with PBS, but then you get regular, week-long begathons that are even worse that the commercial breaks. If you want good content, you gots to pay for it, one way or the other.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by stonetools

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.
Ad-supported TV has been there and shows no sign of dying away, despite the decades long existence of technological means to avoid ads completely.

I think she pretty convincingly refuted all of your arguments, such as they were. You need to do more than just assert that people who don't think ads will take off are luddites and that "wise businessmen" or "wise authors" will make it work.

The fact is that ads for novels have been tried and failed, and there's nothing sufficiently different about the e-book model to suggest that they will work this time around. And the fact that magazines and TV have been supported by ads doesn't provide any evidence that they will work for novels, since there is a long shared history of magazines with ads and novels without.

[stonetools]

The fact is that ads for novels have been tried and failed, and there's nothing sufficiently different about the e-book model to suggest that they will work this time around. And the fact that magazines and TV have been supported by ads doesn't provide any evidence that they will work for novels, since there is a long shared history of magazines with ads and novels without.
__________________

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.

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.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by stonetools

Actually, there is some very good, no ads TV in the US with PBS, but then you get regular, week-long begathons that are even worse that the commercial breaks. If you want good content, you gots to pay for it, one way or the other.

You must not watch much PBS. There have been ads between the programs for years.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by stonetools

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.

You keep ignoring the arithmetic she has presented multiple times.

Business logic does, and must, include doing the numbers.

Mathematics. It is not just for techno-geeks.

Originally Posted by JohnMcCarthy

He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

They also charge a tax to TV owners. Some of the money to create shows is coming directly from viewers rather than advertisers. (Usually, I think that's the more civilized version. But it's worth noting that there's still a cost: US viewers get stuck with interruptions; UK viewers pay cash, which avoids those.)

Yes, as mentioned above, £145.50 at the moment, which is about £12.13/$20 per month. And yes, it's effectively a tax on owning a television. Technically, it's a licence for the ownership of a means of watching broadcast TV.

But of course, US viewers often choose to pay for satellite or cable TV, which probably comes to as much or more, and they still get the adverts!

[Bilbo1967]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

But of course, US viewers often choose to pay for satellite or cable TV, which probably comes to as much or more, and they still get the adverts!

As do many UK viewers, come to that.

[stonetools]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

You keep ignoring the arithmetic she has presented multiple times.

Business logic does, and must, include doing the numbers.


Mathematics. It is not just for techno-geeks.

Her points are answered (with mathematics even) in a WAll Street Journal editorial by a business professor and a former book editor .
The nub :

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.

LINK

Quite frankly, I haven't the read the full article, but clearly, some folks with actual experience in the book industry and academic cred have concluded that ads in ebooks aren't hopeless. I've got to head out now, and "I'll try to see if Ican rundown the full article ( Its behind a opauy well) but that's something to chew on. TTFN