Putting a Price on Your Attention
April 13, 2011
Dollars and Adsense.
Yesterday, Amazon announced the pre-order of the very exciting, brand (teehee) spankin’ new, world’s first advertisement supported Kindle Wi-Fi. Are you on the edge of your seat? I didn’t think so. eBooknewser tells us all about it: for 18% off the price of the already existing Kindle Wi-Fi (that’s 25 bucks!) you get the same exact Kindle and a bunch of hot Amazon deals, like six Audio books for $6, pay just $10 for a $20 gift card, and more! The catch—when you “wake” Kindle up and put it to sleep, your screensaver is a full page ad (General Motors, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Olay, and Visa are among those to have signed on), as well as a pop-up advertisement along the bottom of the home screen. While the ads don’t invade the screen while you’re reading the latest from Steig Larsson, I bet it’s just a matter of time before they do.
Is this really what’s going to happen to books? Perhaps it’s already happened to them. Books were once something to turn to when the excess of commodified space was too daunting to bear; they were a retreat from a world soaked in social media, sneaky advertisements, and mass consumption. I’m not so sure anymore, and the pace at which the advertising industry seeps into all things that were once good is worrisome, to say the least. I’m not so sure I even want to know what comes next.
