Is there nothing sacred anymore? Ads are everywhere, and while I understand that advertising is the only way a lot of people make money these days, there’s one medium where I’m not even remotely interested in seeing them — books. I don’t want to see ads in print, in ebooks or ibooks, or in the middle of blog posts. Copy should be readable, uninterrupted, and as clean as is humanly possible. The moment an iAd shows up in an iBook I’m packing it in, giving up on e-readers, and never, ever going back. The Wall Street Journal has some interesting speculation about the possibility of including iAds in iBooks, but it still makes me feel all queazy inside.
I’m not even remotely joking about this. I can’t think of one single situation where an advertisement in a book is remotely plausible. If anyone could make the advertisement unobtrusive, it would be Apple, but I’m still not willing to go down that road.
There’s one exception that I might be willing to consider and it’s advertising carried out in the way books currently do it today — an advert on the first and last page and that’s it. If the advertisement was for other books in the book store, a discount on a print edition of the iBook, or something similar, I might be willing to let it slide. But only in that case, and I certainly won’t be happy if I occasionally get an advertisement bar, iAd bar, or popup in the middle of my reading.
What would you be willing to embrace?
Article Via TUAW
