
Amazon's New Kindle Fire Tablets Are All Ad-Supported - rkudeshi
http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/09/06/amazons-new-kindle-fire-tablets-are-all-ad-supported
======
tomstokes
This move is sure to upset the Hacker News and tech enthusiast crowds. After
all, who wants to pay full price for a product that continues to deliver ads
to you? The tacit contract across the web is that _free == ad supported_ ,
while _paid == no ads_.

However, I'm not so sure if the average consumer (the target audience for the
Kindle) will even think twice about this. Consider cable TV; People happily
pay for cable TV subscriptions which still include commercial ads. They
(arguably) don't get in the way of the end-user experience, yet they subsidize
the costs for TV programming. Likewise, the ads on the Kindle are limited to
the lock screen and kept out of the way of the actual user experience.

Also note that Amazon has deliberately chosen to not offer a higher-priced
version without ads. Without an option to pay more to remove ads, the consumer
will never have to debate whether or not the annoyance of the ads is worth $30
dollars to them. Instead, the ads become a fact of life and are accepted
without question by the end users. Even better, it widens the Kindle
advertising demographic to include those with the most disposable income who
would otherwise pay to remove the ads. Smart move.

~~~
cryptoz
A few years ago I was absolutely positive that the Chromebooks would be $50
and mostly ad-supported. When they turned out to be $300 with _no forced ads_
I was shocked and totally turned off the idea. Cheap computing with ads seems
like a pretty solid model for vendors going forward (well, not MS or Apple)
and I'm surprised it has taken this long to really get going.

~~~
protomyth
A lot of the PC users I deal with believe if a device is showing you ads, then
it has a virus. Computing devices are pretty much in the same category as
other electronics for a lot of people. I pay for it, I don't want to see ads.

// a humorous take <http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2011/04/13>

~~~
fierarul
>Computing devices are pretty much in the same category as other electronics
for a lot of people

While you see them as thin clients I presume?

~~~
protomyth
Not sure your meaning other than maybe I should have said "consumer
electronics" such as TVs and stereos.

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wtvanhest
I ordered the Kindle Fire HD 32gig yesterday. I am considering cancelling it
due to the ads for one major reason, battery life, and other reasons.

I don't want anything displayed when I lock it. I want it off. I also don't
want anything displayed when I turn it on, I want instant access to my stuff.

I'm not a fan of Apple products, but I know the iPad is good for $600 (32gig
version), so I feel like the price differential is somewhat reduced by ads,
and I'm still taking on the risk of ending up with something like the original
fire. ($240 difference)

I wish Amazon had shown a price to remove the ads along with the release and
also showed an exact demo of how they work.

When they said customers are buying the best tablet, they really aren't if it
has ads. Rather I am buying a lower end, ad supported tablet. From a marketing
perspective, they signal low quality, rather than high quality to the
customer.

~~~
alecdibble
You are making a lot of assumptions about how Amazon implemented ads. I would
be VERY surprised if they kept the screen on after locking just to display an
ad, especially when battery life is such an important metric for tablets.

Also, many other comments (and people I know) have indicated that the ad
experience on the Kindle is "nice" because the ads are usually actually
coupons. If the ads on the Fire turned out to be Amazon Deals, that could be a
handy feature.

~~~
wtvanhest
From Amazon.com "Your offers display on the lock screen and lower left hand
corner of the home screen, they don't interrupt use of the device."

If they are displaying on the lock screen, how else would it work? I admit I
am making an assumption, but I can't think of another way it would work.

~~~
chc
It doesn't seem unreasonable to assume the lock screen is only shown shortly
after locking and right before waking up, like every other tablet. (And for
the e-ink Kindles, it doesn't seem like much of an issue. E-ink devices
already all use screensavers AFAIK and still get months of battery life.)

~~~
daeken
E-ink displays only use power when updating, so screen savers are free.

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Osiris
I have one of the ad-supported Kindle e-readers and I can say that at first I
thought I would be annoyed by them but it turned out that most of the ads were
actually _coupons_. There was one to get a kindle case at 50% retail, which I
used. Many others were good deals like that. When I was using it I found
myself actually reviewing the ad on the screensaver before I turned it off to
see if I liked the deal or not.

I wonder if the ads on the Fire will come from the Amazon daily deal site or
other special offers rather than just banner ads like you'd see on a website.

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daeken
I've said many times before that I will never buy another _non-_ ad-supported
Kindle as long as they're available. While the price going down is nice (not
that it's much), what's more important to me is that the ads are actually
good! I've gotten quite a few deals on books (e.g. $0.99 book deals not
available to non-ad Kindle owners), probably close to $20 off on Amazon MP3,
and quite a few other things I'm forgetting. They're not remotely obtrusive
and they add value for me; I really can't see any downside whatsoever.

~~~
hpguy
+1. While I haven't got any deal out of it, I do think the ads make very good
cover screen. I'd prefer them much more than an empty dull cover screen.

~~~
erichocean
The screens without ads are neither "empty" nor "dull". They show pictures of
_authors_ , and have since the very first Kindle.

I do agree with the parent though, ads on the screen don't bother me at all.

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ChuckMcM
It is an interesting choice. There was a time when every television you bought
was a conduit of ads. Think about that for a minute, here you had companies
like GE, Panasonic, Toshiba, Magnavox, selling you this television for some
price, and the only content you could get for it had un-skippable advertising
injected several times an hour. There was no 'rev share' agreement with the TV
manufacturers, they had to live or die on their hardware margins.

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druiid
I think that this is both a smart move on the part of Amazon, and also a
portent of bad things to come in general. One of the ideas behind the tablet
'ecosystem' in general (at least the one spawned by Apple), is to control the
vision and view of your computing experience. Given that standard
'workstation' type computers are historically more free-form in how they allow
you to access them and work with them compared to tablets, I suppose forcing
ads upon the users was the next logical step for the structured tablet
platforms.

I wonder more generally if this is the first shot across the bow and it's
something we will see from Apple and Google in the future. I think the
question at that point is also... how soon until the new Kindle gets rooted
and these ads blocked ;).

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simonsarris
There's a peevish backlash against advertising that permeates a lot of our
culture and especially places like HN[1]. Some of it is founded, especially in
older times, when it literally meant (paraphrasing PG) that you are subjected
to X amount of abuse for Y amount of content. Some platforms are still like
that (TV - for instance advertising tampons to me, is a little silly), but a
lot (Google, Amazon, Netflix) aren't.

I think in the backlash I often see there's some discomforting thing that
people want to express, as if we feel like like we're being had by
advertising. It certainly feels that way during the political campaign, and I
can sympathize.

But on the other hand advertising has certainly helped me out and I can even
remember some very real examples. I had no idea the new intel chipset was out
until an ad pointed it out. I had no idea that certain clothing and furniture
brands existed until ads pointed them out. I had no idea Honda remade the
Honda Elite moped in 2010 until an ad pointed that out. All of these were
really useful to me, and all of them eventually lead me to buying something.

I bought all these things but I don't feel like I've been had. Both the
products and the advertisements provided a lot of utility. We don't know what
we don't know, as Donald Rumsfeld poetically said. Sometimes advertising can
do the good of filling that gap. They deserve that much.

Some of the best books I've ever read were not recommended to me by my
friends, who, if they share my tastes in books, _only share them
incidentally._ Amazon on the other hand has done something great and given me
real, concrete suggestions (read: advertisements) supported by the data I've
given them whilst buying and browsing.

We have to give them at least a little credit. Advertising, especially for
Google/Amazon/Netflix, is solving real problems for both the companies and the
consumers.

[1] Stories that bubble to the top have titles like "work on something real,
not ads" and remind me of phrases like "real women have curves". Both of which
seem unnecessarily narrow and just plain _mean_ to me.

~~~
dumbdumbda
OK, so why can't ads be optional then? If you want the benefits, then you just
"turn on" ads (=helpful suggestions). If ads are beneficial why would they
charge you extra to turn them "off"? Under your reasoning, we should be paying
extra to see ads, because we'd get helpful suggestions.

Your argument makes little sense.

~~~
DeadMonkey321
His point there was that not all ads are evil. As someone who has purchased
things based off of Facebook ads that I've seen, I share his "lack of hatred"
for ads, provided they're not annoying or malicious. If they keep services I
like free or cheaper as a result of their existence, then I'm not going to
complain about them too much.

~~~
dumbdumbda
Your last sentence is intriguing. Do you believe that ads are the only means
to keep services "free" or "cheaper"?

If you do, then that would explain why you have come to accept them as
"necessary" for services to be "free" or "cheap". (i.e., you've made a causal
link between ads and "free/cheap")

If you don't, then I have more questions for you to answer.

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dripton
Maybe most of the market doesn't care, but I care a lot. I gladly paid $30
more for an ad-free Kindle, and I won't be buying one of the new Fires if they
don't have an ad-free version.

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WalterBright
I have both ad supported and non-ad supported Kindles. The DX is not ad
supported, and its screensaver is an ugly picture of an author. There seem to
be about 10 of these, which it scrolls through. Those pictures are not
settable by the user, and get awfully, awfully boring.

I prefer the ad supported one, at least you get new screensaver pictures once
in a while.

~~~
baconner
You can hack in your own screensaver images on most (no ads) kindles.

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hmottestad
Seems to only be on the lock screen.

In theory they could put whatever they want there, but I guess they will keep
it low profile. Like related books, games and appliances that are relevant to
your amazon profile.

Question now is if other tablet manufacturers have to go ad-supported in order
to compete or if they'll play the "no ads here" card.

~~~
Shivetya
With the Kindle Touch if I leave wireless off; which is perfect okay for an
e-reader; I do not get ads after awhile. Granted with the new Fires your not
going to want to go that route.

I never did figure out why Amazon loaded me down with baby ads one week. From
newborn's clothing to pampers ads. I have never ordered the like and nothing
in my immediate future trends that way. When it is working I tend to see more
books than anything else on the sleep screen.

~~~
Harkins
Could've just been a random test. New parents are such insanely profitable
customers they're worth a bit of risk/expense to acquire.

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mtgx
It seems they will allow you to opt-out:

[http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/07/amazon-confirms-yes-
you-c...](http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/07/amazon-confirms-yes-you-can-opt-
out-of-ads-on-new-kindle-fire/)

------
marquis
I'm glad I read this: I pre-ordered the ad version yesterday unawares, and
just cancelled my order and re-ordered with the extra no-ad tax. My ship date
slipped by 10 days sadly.

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mrspandex
I think Amazon could make more money by offering an option to disable the ads
for $x. Whoever is willing to pay is likely not someone to click on the ads
anyway, but they avoid upsetting people who don't want to rent out their
eyeballs.

~~~
brown9-2
They already do offer this option. The article says it costs $30.

~~~
bryanlarsen
I read that they won't be offering this option on the new models.

~~~
gav
The new Paperwhite is $119, or $139 without ads.

~~~
cryptoz
That's a different product line, though. The article and discussion here is
about the Android tablet, not the e-reader.

------
fpgeek
One interesting question is whether or not Google will respond by adding an
ad-supported component to their tablet ecosystem.

As a technical matter, I don't think it would be hard (for instance) to add
Gmail ads to the Gmail app. And I'd think those ads wouldn't bother people
much since they're used to them on the web. The real questions are whether or
not the math works out and whether or not people would go for it (they way
they apparently have with Amazon).

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btipling
I would have liked to see an ad-free option, but given the quality of the ads,
I'd have to try it out to see if it would bother me first.

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bitwize
I love how they imply the possibility of rooting.

The new KF will undoubtedly ship with a locked bootloader that checks ROM
signatures and clobbers any unauthorized ROMs on startup.

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criswell
It really all depends how intrusive ads are for me. As long as it doesn't keep
me from doing what I want to do I can ignore it pretty easily.

~~~
robflynn
I have a current gen Kindle Touch Ad-Supported version. The ads are displayed
in two places:

1\. When the Kindle is switched off, there is a full screen ad. They're mostly
for books (sometimes audio books) or some sort of local special offer.
Sometimes they just give you a heads up about an amazon sale.

2\. When the kindle is switched ON and you are on the main navigational
screen: There's a very small ad at the bottom of the screen. Clicking it will
switch to the full screen view of the ad to give you more information.

No ads are currently displayed in the middle of your books nor do they
interrupt the flow of what you're doing.

So long as they stay the same way in Paperwhite then I'll be fine with it. I
barely pay them any attention anyway.

Here's an example of how they currently look:
[http://cdn2.sbnation.com/entry_photo_images/2268850/kindle-t...](http://cdn2.sbnation.com/entry_photo_images/2268850/kindle-
touch-011_gallery_post.jpg)

[http://cdn1.sbnation.com/entry_photo_images/2268908/kindle-t...](http://cdn1.sbnation.com/entry_photo_images/2268908/kindle-
touch-001_gallery_post.jpg)

(The above images were taken from
[http://www.theverge.com/2011/11/14/2559732/kindle-touch-
revi...](http://www.theverge.com/2011/11/14/2559732/kindle-touch-review.))

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bambax
How hard is it to jailbreak it? Has it already happened to the old Kindle
Fire...?

