Amazon.com has unveiled yet another version of the Kindle - this one priced at $114 that comes with software to show ads to readers. Called the Kindle With Special Offers, it will be go on sale May 3 at Best Buy Co. and Target, as well as, of course, Amazon.
General Motors's Buick, Procter & Gamble’s Olay skin products and Visa will be among the first advertisers on the Kindle. Amazon will also be advertising its own promotions, such as a $10 gift card for $20 worth of merchandise.
User Choice
Amazon is also borrowing from a popular ad model - user’s choice - as it displays its ads. The technology it is using is called AdMash and it allows readers to choose which ads are shown on the Kindle. It’ll be available as both an app and a website where Kindle owners can rate potential screensaver ads. Users can also set preferences for the types of screensaver or home page ads they’d like to see.
Users also won’t be bombarded with ads as they are reading, Amazon promises. Rather the black-and-white graphic ads will display on the home page and on the screen saver.
More eBooks than Paperbacks
This Kindle opens a new opportunity for marketers. EBooks are a high growth category, as sales are expected almost triple to $2.8 billion by 2015, according to Forrester Research. Amazon has been reporting that it is selling more copies of its Kindle ebooks than paperbacks.
Four Formats and CountingWhile ebook ads have appeared in different platforms, they have been experimental at best. With the release of this Kindle, they are bound to become mainstream.
They include:
Sponsorships. Already with the new Kindle, some companies, according to the Wall Street Journal, are exploring sponsorships to give readers free digital books.
Rich Media Displays. Marketers are also looking at inserting video or graphic ads that appear at the beginning of an e-book or along the borders of a digital page, the Journal also said.
Product Placement Links. Richard Curtis, a New York literary agent and digital book publisher, told the Journal that expects to see product placement in digital books, such as a link in a novel to a product being advertised.
Movie Promotions. Fandango already experimented with this model, offering movie-goers for the film Gulliver's Travelers a copy of classic in e-book form. When the e-book was downloaded from online bookseller Wowio's web site it was embedded with Fandango’s promotions.
