Amazon is pitching ads on their tiny screen Kindle Fire’s welcome screen, “according to an executive at an agency that Amazon has pitched,” Jason Del Rey reports for AdAge. “The company has been telling ad agency execs that they must spend about $600,000 for any package that includes such an ad.”
“The ad campaigns would run for two months and also include inventory from Amazon’s ‘Special Offers’ product,” Del Rey reports. “For $1 million, advertisers would get more ad inventory and be included in Amazon’s public-relations push, according to this executive and an exec at another ad agency… An Amazon spokeswoman declined to comment. It’s unclear whether it is pitching the ad for the current best-selling Kindle Fire or a future ad-supported version of the device, though the price tag would seem high for an ad unit on a device that currently has no distribution.”
Del Rey reports, “Both agency executives have so far declined to participate, citing several concerns. For one, Amazon isn’t guaranteeing the number of devices that the welcome-screen ads will reach, telling agencies that it hasn’t decided whether the ads will start popping up on devices that have already been purchased or just on new devices. ‘It’s kind of an expensive buy to not get a guaranteed audience and measurement,’ one of these people said. ‘It doesn’t comply with a lot of our necessary planning rigor.’
Del Rey reports, “Both execs are also worried about the consumer experience, especially if the ads start showing up on already-sold devices whose welcome screens haven’t previously displayed advertising. ‘You’re already paying a premium for the product and then having that unexpected ad experience makes for a worse consumer experience,’ one of the execs said. ‘There needs to be a value exchange.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Not only did you pay too much for an unresponsive, sluggish, mobile Amazon storefront, but now you get ads on you’re “welcome” screen. Welcome, sucker!
One question: who’s going to buy ads on a device purchased by people who are either too poor to buy a real iPad or too stupid not to buy a real iPad? Bail bondsmen, check cashing outfits, pawn shops, beer helmet and beef jerky peddlers do not a successful advertising company make.
The demographics of “too poor and/or too stupid” aren’t worth anywhere close to what Amazon is asking.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “richbrazil” for the heads up.]
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