How do I run dynamic ads inside an ebook?

February 4, 2009 9:04 PM

Dynamic Advertising: How do I put it in an ebook? I'd like to 1) put advertising that is a) dynamic (and changeable from a script on my site) and b) CPM (paid per exposure, rather than per action) into 2) an ebook, either pdf or exe. Any suggestions on the best way to do this? Thanks!
posted by darth_tedious to computers & internet (6 comments total)

There are quite a few advertising solutions for embedding dynamic advertising in an executable, but all I know of trigger malware or spyware warnings. (Never mind that I would immediately think "Trojan!" if I saw an ebook that was a Windows executable.)

As for inside PDF's I am unaware of such a thing, but it is probably, technically possible if there's an ad network that supports it. (In other words, I doubt it since it's such a small market.)

If you're doing doing a 'book' that is purely ad supported, you might as well just make a web page and use a reliable and respected ad network to serve the ads. It's much easier for you to make/track/etc will make it accessible to more visitors/readers, and will be indexable by search engines so they can direct traffic your way, all which a pdf or .exe limit.

Another option would be an iPhone app with something like an AdMob advertisement wrapper.

Oh and, in general the "dynamic (and changeable from a script on my site)" part is a no-no with virtually every ad server out there. They control the ads, letting you do it leads to fraud and other madness for them. That's the deal with selling ad space. You have the space, they have the ad.
posted by Ookseer at 10:28 PM on February 4

b1t,

There are some people who don't want to pay $50 or $100 or $150 outright for info... but want it nonetheless (and are willing to pirate-- which is to say, steal-- to get it).

Since micropayments aren't here yet, there may as well be another option for these thriftier souls among us.
posted by darth_tedious at 10:33 PM on February 4

Ookseer--

That was informative; thanks.
posted by darth_tedious at 10:35 PM on February 4

I do remember listening to a podcast where they interviewed a guy from a company who specialized in placing dynamic ads into podcasts... every person who downloads it gets potentially different ads.

Perhaps some permutation of that method would work for eBooks.
posted by Wild_Eep at 6:50 AM on February 5

Even if you could get them embedded, your other problem is going to be getting reliable reporting back from offline readers. You'd have to convince them to install a reader application that queued up all it's view-history, and then uploads it to your reporting server the next time it has a net connection. If the end user had a paranoid-level firewall, they could prevent the reader from calling home, etc etc.
posted by nomisxid at 9:11 AM on February 5

Wild_Eep: thanks for the link.

nomismixid: good point about the reporting...
posted by darth_tedious at 11:50 AM on February 5