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Ads in ebooks
Every once in a while, the topic of "ads in ebooks" comes up at Mobileread.
Not. Gonna. Happen.
Not because it's technically too difficult--although it's not easy. Text-based ads are almost useless (well, they work okay for Google, but that's because you can click them; people won't stop to click them in the middle of the book. They don't work well as embedded links on keywords; people disable Snap.com when they can), and *any* picture based ads have to consider the hardware & software involved. They'll look different depending on whether the book is being read on a computer monitor, a laptop or netbook, a tablet like the iPad, a 6" e-ink screen, or a mobile phone. How do you design a picture-ad that's readable on a cellphone & not horrifically boring or annoying on a 21" screen?
Answer: you don't.
A lot of people seem to think that "of course" ads in ebooks will be dynamic, that the content may change every time you open the book--because *of course* people reading ebooks do so with an active 'net connection. (Thank you, apple, for convincing the technoworld that a 3g connection is how everyone does online. Bleh.)
Targeting ebook ads is another problem, and a big one that barely gets mentioned. Ads in magazines are targeted to the subscribers; advertisers have demographic info about them. Books don't split nearly as well along simple demographic lines. "Readers of Harlequin romances" are not grouped by economic level, education, location, or race, and it's almost impossible to identify their hobbies or interests outside of formulaic romances. (They do veer strongly towards white, middle-class, some-college education. But that's a starting point, not an advert-usable demographic.) They don't split by lib/conservative, nor by religion, nor by amount of indoor vs outdoor activity. There's no simple way to target an ad in Harlequins.
Oh, you could put ads in for shoes or clothes or makeup, on the assumption that the readership is 90% female. Or those annoying weight-loss ads. Sure. But -- and here's the other big part -- even if the readers are somewhat interested in the topic of the ad (questionable point, that), how do they go from "I saw this ad in a book" to "I'll buy this thing?"
With magazines, the ads are bold and colorful, with memorable slogans and pretty pretty people. And people flip through magazines several times, seeing that big center-spread ad every time they move from the start of an article at the beginning to the conclusion in the back. Newspapers include a lot of ads as separate pull-outs; you can cut out the ad you want to remember and keep it in your pocket. A lot of that is lost in most ebook presentations--e-ink screens don't do bold & colorful, and smartphones don't do big, and people reading books don't flip back and forth.
How many adverts does it take to convince someone to stop reading ebooks, or at least never buy that kind of book again? Versus, how much will an advertiser pay to reach 1 reader? Big issue, that one--if the advertiser(s) won't pay $2/book, there's pretty much no reason to bother having advertisers; adverts require an admin step in the book production, and publishers have to *know* that some people will bitch loudly about ads, regardless of how non-invasive they manage to be. Gotta get something that's worth both the extra production stage and the loss of customer goodwill.
So the advertiser has to pay the publisher to include their ads in the book. How many ads? Displayed how--a splash page at the beginning of each chapter? (What size? Is it just as pretty on an iPad or a Kindle?)
How can the publisher convince the advertiser that it's worth their money? If the Adverter(s) pays $2 per ebook, they want that back and more or it's not worth bothering with the admin problems of keeping track of which books what ad was included in.
However much advertisers pay for a page in Rolling Stone, I suspect it's not 10% of the retail cost. They sell *tiny pieces* to *lots of advertisers*, and spread the costs out like that, and *still* charge, what is it now, $6 per issue?
There's also DRM issues, which are neatly shoved aside when these conversations come up. On the one hand, nonDRM ebooks are easier to share w/family & friends, a plus for advertisers. On the other, nonDRM means they could be converted & the ads stripped out, a serious minus for advertisers. But it's probably a moot point--the publishers who would be most likely to use advertisers are the Big 6, and they all use DRM.
That's even *harder* to pitch to advertisers. "Buy space in our new ebook. Each book can be read by up to 6 people on the same account, which means sharing the same budget! After it's read, it can't be handed off to anyone else! The DRM won't be stripped on probably at least 2/3 of the books that get sold! Pls to ignore the ad-free txt/html version floating around on the torrent sites!"
Riiiight.
The key issue isn't, "how can they include ads in ebooks?" That's a tech matter; it'll get solved. The key issue is, "how can it be worth a substantial subsidy to reach 1 reader per purchase?"
Not. Gonna. Happen.
Not because it's technically too difficult--although it's not easy. Text-based ads are almost useless (well, they work okay for Google, but that's because you can click them; people won't stop to click them in the middle of the book. They don't work well as embedded links on keywords; people disable Snap.com when they can), and *any* picture based ads have to consider the hardware & software involved. They'll look different depending on whether the book is being read on a computer monitor, a laptop or netbook, a tablet like the iPad, a 6" e-ink screen, or a mobile phone. How do you design a picture-ad that's readable on a cellphone & not horrifically boring or annoying on a 21" screen?
Answer: you don't.
A lot of people seem to think that "of course" ads in ebooks will be dynamic, that the content may change every time you open the book--because *of course* people reading ebooks do so with an active 'net connection. (Thank you, apple, for convincing the technoworld that a 3g connection is how everyone does online. Bleh.)
Targeting ebook ads is another problem, and a big one that barely gets mentioned. Ads in magazines are targeted to the subscribers; advertisers have demographic info about them. Books don't split nearly as well along simple demographic lines. "Readers of Harlequin romances" are not grouped by economic level, education, location, or race, and it's almost impossible to identify their hobbies or interests outside of formulaic romances. (They do veer strongly towards white, middle-class, some-college education. But that's a starting point, not an advert-usable demographic.) They don't split by lib/conservative, nor by religion, nor by amount of indoor vs outdoor activity. There's no simple way to target an ad in Harlequins.
Oh, you could put ads in for shoes or clothes or makeup, on the assumption that the readership is 90% female. Or those annoying weight-loss ads. Sure. But -- and here's the other big part -- even if the readers are somewhat interested in the topic of the ad (questionable point, that), how do they go from "I saw this ad in a book" to "I'll buy this thing?"
With magazines, the ads are bold and colorful, with memorable slogans and pretty pretty people. And people flip through magazines several times, seeing that big center-spread ad every time they move from the start of an article at the beginning to the conclusion in the back. Newspapers include a lot of ads as separate pull-outs; you can cut out the ad you want to remember and keep it in your pocket. A lot of that is lost in most ebook presentations--e-ink screens don't do bold & colorful, and smartphones don't do big, and people reading books don't flip back and forth.
How many adverts does it take to convince someone to stop reading ebooks, or at least never buy that kind of book again? Versus, how much will an advertiser pay to reach 1 reader? Big issue, that one--if the advertiser(s) won't pay $2/book, there's pretty much no reason to bother having advertisers; adverts require an admin step in the book production, and publishers have to *know* that some people will bitch loudly about ads, regardless of how non-invasive they manage to be. Gotta get something that's worth both the extra production stage and the loss of customer goodwill.
So the advertiser has to pay the publisher to include their ads in the book. How many ads? Displayed how--a splash page at the beginning of each chapter? (What size? Is it just as pretty on an iPad or a Kindle?)
How can the publisher convince the advertiser that it's worth their money? If the Adverter(s) pays $2 per ebook, they want that back and more or it's not worth bothering with the admin problems of keeping track of which books what ad was included in.
However much advertisers pay for a page in Rolling Stone, I suspect it's not 10% of the retail cost. They sell *tiny pieces* to *lots of advertisers*, and spread the costs out like that, and *still* charge, what is it now, $6 per issue?
There's also DRM issues, which are neatly shoved aside when these conversations come up. On the one hand, nonDRM ebooks are easier to share w/family & friends, a plus for advertisers. On the other, nonDRM means they could be converted & the ads stripped out, a serious minus for advertisers. But it's probably a moot point--the publishers who would be most likely to use advertisers are the Big 6, and they all use DRM.
That's even *harder* to pitch to advertisers. "Buy space in our new ebook. Each book can be read by up to 6 people on the same account, which means sharing the same budget! After it's read, it can't be handed off to anyone else! The DRM won't be stripped on probably at least 2/3 of the books that get sold! Pls to ignore the ad-free txt/html version floating around on the torrent sites!"
Riiiight.
The key issue isn't, "how can they include ads in ebooks?" That's a tech matter; it'll get solved. The key issue is, "how can it be worth a substantial subsidy to reach 1 reader per purchase?"