Marketers Test Ads In E-Books
The marketing world is drawing up plans to invade one of the last bastions of media that is largely advertising-free: books.
As e-books proliferate, advertisers are experimenting with ways to pitch to consumers while they read, a trend that could change the publishing business but faces opposition from some traditionalists.
Marketers are exploring a variety of formats, including sponsorships that give readers free books. Videos, graphics or text with an advertiser’s message that appear when a person first starts a book or along the border of the digital pages are also in the works. Ads can be targeted based on the book’s content and the demographic and profile information of the reader.
The advertising business has dabbled with books before without much success as authors howled and revenues proved skimpy. It’s not clear that readers and authors would be more accepting now.
