April 12, 2011
Amazon selling Kindle with ads for $114
By Wilson Rothman
Technology.msnbc.msn.com
Amazon found a way to shave $25 more dollars off the price of the Wi-Fi Kindle: It's selling ads.
The new edition, which bears the awkward name "Kindle with Special Offers," has two differentiating functions: Delivering Amazon special offers to you, and popping ads up as screensavers where those tranquil etchings used to appear.
The offers are pretty nice. In the first few weeks, Amazon says, "examples" of offers include:
$10 for $20 Amazon.com Gift Card
$6 for 6 Audible Books (normally $68 )
$1 for an album in the Amazon MP3 Store (choose from over 1 million albums)
$10 for $30 of products in the Amazon Denim Shop or Amazon Swim Shop
A full list of the current offers will be accessible from the new Kindle's main menu, says Amazon. The company also says that while the first wave of deals will be for the retailer itself, there will also be deals outside of Amazon in the coming months, once they talk up the program with partners.
Kindle owners are already signed-on-the-dotted-line Amazon customers — that's kinda the whole point of Kindle's e-book system — so these offers make a lot of sense. In fact, people who spent $139 or more on their Kindle may be upset that theirs won't occasionally offer up some instant savings on other Amazon items.
But the ads, well, those may not be so desirable.
As you can see above, they pop up where literary and artistic screensavers currently appear. Launch partners include Visa, Olay, Buick and Chase. Back in 2005, we all whined about ads showing up on our phones, but when "Angry Birds" was offered to us for free in the Android Market, we downloaded it by the millions, ads and all.
Still, is the price of our attention a lousy $25? I think there's plausibly a day when Kindles will actually be free — at least with a sizable up-front purchase of e-books, plus recurring ads and offers. But even if that day is far off, why is this product not $99? That's the next sweet spot, and it's a shocker that all of the injected marketing couldn't bring the price to that level.
Amazon may not have pushed the price down below $100, but the company is trying to make the ads themselves more palatable to users. It will soon release a Kindle app and website called AdMash that basically lets you vote on ads, using the Hot-or-Not principle where you identify which of two prospective screens looks better. Part of me wants to compliment Amazon for being so considerate in their approach to their advertisees. (Even though it's advertising, the process sounds highly addictive.) But part of me feels like it's asking us to choose the poison that will be dumped into our wells.
So what are your thoughts? Is $25 off, plus the promise of sweet Amazon treats, good enough for you? Or are you holding out for a $99 price tag before you cut off a little piece of your pride?
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