Amazon Pitching Kindle Fire Welcome-Screen Ads for $600K

05-19-2012 • http://www.wired.com, By Roberto Baldwin

Ad Age reports that Amazon has been pitching Kindle Fire welcome-screen ads to ad agency executives. For a paltry $600,000, companies can purchase an Amazon “Special Offers” ad to run for two months on the best-selling Android tablet around.

The agencies were unable to determine if the ads would be served to current Kindle Fires, or on an upcoming, subsidized Kindle Fire model. In the Ad Age report, one agency executive expressed concern that adding ads to the current Kindle Fire would upset owners: “You’re already paying a premium for the product and then having that unexpected ad experience makes for a worse consumer experience.”

It’s also unclear what exactly the welcome screen is on the Kindle Fire. Is it the lock screen? Or is it screen that appears when the Fire is started up?

Understandably, the ad agencies that spoke with Ad Age declined to sign up for the Amazon ad buy.

If Amazon is planning on an ad-supported Kindle Fire, the savings could be significant for consumers. Amazon has been selling ad-supported Kindle e-readers for a while now, offering hardware price reductions to consumers willing to suffer a few static ads. Ad-supported Kindles are on average approximately 30 percent cheaper than their ad-free counterparts. If Amazon were to knock 25 percent off of the price of the Kindle Fire, the tablet would sell for $150.