Amazon announced on Monday a new Kindle option, Kindle with Special Offers. It is a $139 Kindle Wi-Fi selling for $114 if you agree to have ads on it. The ads would appear as part of the screensaver, and at the bottom of the Home Page, but not inside the reading experience. This is the sort of ad experience we can live with.
Business Insider insists that this is the future of gadgets…ads that are not annoying, but are present. Remember, a newspaper has ads and people do not find them offensive. The subsidy is $25 now, but it could be more on future projects, depending on the results. And as long as the ads aren’t annoying, and you have the choice to buy adless…why not?
As for why the Kindle isn’t free with ads…there is no proven business model for that. But maybe, after this, there will be.
From a Kindle perspective, we are very disappointed that you can get a custom screensaver that shows ads, but you can’t get one that shows something other than the random authors and art Amazon chooses. Seems a shame.
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- Amazon Announces Ad-Supported Kindle For $114 (That’s $25 Off) (crunchgear.com)
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