Target students via e-textbooks

College students spend a large chunk of their college fund on textbooks, around $900 per student per year, according to Freeload Press. Downloading some e-textbooks and ancillary materials has become a popular way for students to cut their college bills and, increasingly, a way for advertisers to reach their target market.

The price a student pays for downloading the e-textbooks is that they are exposed to advertising within the materials. Known as “Study Ad Breaks”™ the ads appear throughout the books at “natural breaks” such as the end and beginning of chapters.

Ads can include hyperlinks to take students to specific websites and audio and video ads will be included for the 2008 Spring semester.

"The textbook ad not only can drive leads and traffic through live hyperlinks in the PDF chapters, but potentially consumer loyalty, in that the student knows that these advertisers have essentially given them a gift of significant value by offsetting the costs of textbooks,” said Jason Bakker, Campus Media Group’s Director of Marketing.

E-textbooks have previously been used by sponsors such as Fedex Kinko’s, College Loan Corporation, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Discover.

Tags: advertising, e-textbook, students, Study Ad Breaks