David Bollier notes that McGraw-Hill has begun solicting advertisements for inclusion in their textbooks. "Yuck!" sums up my reaction. I don't even want to think about how annoying that will be. And let's think about the target audience. The most effective ads will be those that are an alternative to studying. Put in some advertisements about social networks or surfing the net to certain sites, file sharing software (couldn't resist), television shows, food, etc., and advertisers are likely to get great response from their ads. LOL
Note: I should mention that the intention is to include flyer inserts, not ads on the pages. 'Course it's still annoying.
Yuck indeed. I'm glad the U.
Yuck indeed. I'm glad the U.S. branch of the company isn't doing this. But it's my understanding that what Ryerson is doing in Canada is related to their educational partnerships and is not just ads for, like, American Express and Budweiser. I sure hope that is indeed the case!
Old is new again
It should be pointed out that boingboing also followed this post with an example of textbook advertising from 1936:
http://www.boingboing.net/2005/06/08/textbook_ads_circa_1.html
(Notice the relevant benefits to male digestion that Lea & Perrins boasts. That's Domestic Science!)
It would seem that advertisements in textbooks are not a recent development, although that fact may not make them any more palatable, with apologies to Lea & Perrins.
I am curious how this fusion of advertising and information in textbooks manifests webtrends. Many webpages, regardless of their ostensible purposes, are encumbered with pop-ups or embedded ads and banners. When this same fusion appears in textbooks, does it flatten the distinction between information that strives for objectivity and that which is heavily biased? Are the readers of these texts capable of filtering out superfluous messages in print as well as in electronic formats?
- J. Tirrell