Amazon to Sell Ads on Kindle Fire Welcome Screen — If You Have $600K
If You Have $600K — Amazon Seeks Big Money as It Brings Advertising to Its Hottest Tablet — The Kindle Fire is Amazon.com's best-selling product, the company said in its first-quarter-earnings release. And it's being treated that way by the Amazon ad sales team.
Context & Ripple Effects
Amazon introduced the Kindle Fire at a $199 entry price in 2011, then faced reports that the device was more profitable than expected. A December estimate of hundreds of millions of monthly ad impressions gave its ad-sales team a basis to treat the tablet as a mass-reach screen.
The welcome-screen sale turns that audience into a premium, device-native advertising product. Amazon’s first-quarter statement that Kindle Fire is its best-selling product gives the placement commercial weight beyond a conventional web ad buy.
First-order effects
- Amazon adds a high-priced welcome-screen placement to the Kindle Fire revenue model, selling access to the device’s installed audience for $600,000.
- Large advertisers gain a prominent Amazon-controlled tablet placement, while Kindle Fire users encounter commercial messaging at device entry.
Second-order effects
- Amazon’s ad-sales team must demonstrate that welcome-screen impressions justify premium pricing, making the device audience and ad performance central to future sales pitches.
- Other tablet and mobile publishers face a clearer comparison point for monetizing default-screen attention rather than relying solely on in-app or web inventory.
Third-order effects
- If advertisers support such placements, low-priced connected devices can be financed by recurring revenue per active device, combining hardware sales with advertising rather than treating the device as a one-time transaction.
The trend: Amazon is extending the Kindle Fire from a $199 hardware product into a platform whose audience can generate advertising revenue after purchase.