I’m running an advertising campaign for my debut novel, Train Wreck, on Book Riot right now. Book Riot is a fun book blog for readers and writers, and the folks over there post a lot of great content on the current literary scene.

To be honest, I don’t particularly trust traditional advertising either. I fast-forward through TV commercials, I ignore magazine ads, and I change radio stations when a show goes to break.

I realize I probably don’t qualify as a typical consumer, but I’ve still always struggled to understand how global corporations can rely on advertising as a major source of income.

The web is even more extreme though. For a lot of online companies, like Google and Facebook, advertising isn’t just a major source of income – it’s the only source of income. With that in mind, consider a couple of points floating around my brain regarding ads, money and the future of the web.

• Online advertising is a game, and sometimes it feels more like a scam.
  
  I’m generalizing here, but there’s no doubt the web ad industry involves a great deal of deception and trickery. As this BusinessWeek article puts it, the brightest minds of our generation are spending their time trying to design new ways to get people to click on ugly ads. It just seems like a waste. Why not put that effort and talent towards fostering innovation and building great products instead of trying to get people to buy crappy ones?

• Online advertising is an exact science, and that might be a bad thing.
  
  When a company places a traditional advertisement in a magazine or on television, the true effect of it is somewhat unknown. On the other hand, every single pageview and click is tracked on the Internet. Companies know when their online ads work, and they know exactly how much revenue they bring in. Over time, I predict the general population will get better at ignoring web advertisements. If and when that happens, advertisers will demand lower rates, and the companies who rely exclusively on ad revenue will suffer.

• Online advertising is not an infinite resource, and eventually it’s going to run out.
  
  The number of websites and mobile apps is growing at an astounding rate these days, and they’re all fighting with each other for ad dollars. Other forms of media have never experienced this severe level of competition due to their relative size. Right now, things look good for the web. Online ad revenue reached a record high of $26 billion in 2010. However, at some point the advertising pool is going to dry up or at least level off, and companies are either going to have to find other ways to monetize or just fold. I don’t know if it will qualify as the bursting of a new tech bubble as so many experts are predicting, but it certainly won’t be pretty.

Amazon has announced a discounted version of its e-reader device called “Kindle with Special Offers” that is available for $114. Basically, what this means is you can save $25 on the wi-fi model by agreeing to let advertisements onto your Kindle.

It sounds scary, but don’t freak out and assume that Amazon is ruining the reading experience by cluttering your e-books with ads. The way the Kindle with Special Offers works is really as unobtrusive as it can get. Advertisements will only appear in screensaver mode and at the bottom of your homescreen (which I visit maybe once a week).

At first, I shrugged this story off since a $25 discount on the Kindle is not all that impressive when you are buying $10-$15 e-books on a regular basis. But after doing some thinking, I’ve come up with two reasons why readers should consider this new Kindle with Special Offers.

1. There’s a loophole to the ad system on the Kindle: it’s web-based. That means when you shut off the wi-fi on your device, the Kindle can’t connect to the ad network and the ads go away. I usually keep my Kindle in offline mode just to save battery, and that strategy will be just as effective for blocking ads.

2. Current Kindle owners know that one of the gadget’s cool features is the stock screensaver rotation that displays images of classic authors. You lose that feature on the Kindle with Special Offers, and while that may seem like a drawback, there is reason to rejoice. This. No more author screensavers means no more creepy Emily DIckinson, which means no more literary nightmares for this guy.

Remember yesterday when I said I felt bad for Apple? Yeah, that barely lasted for 24 hours.

My attitude changed when I heard about a new app launched by Apple called the iAd Gallery. Here’s how it works: you open the app, you stare at the deluxe advertisements that Apple wants to showcase, and then you punch yourself in the face for being such a sucker.

No, it’s not a late April Fools’ Day joke – the iAd Gallery is literally just a collection of interactive advertisements for you to look at. The app has no functionality at all, and as the great team over at Business Insider pointed out, it is technically in violation of Apple’s own development guidelines.

The rules say: “Apps that are primarily marketing materials or advertisements will be rejected.” The iAd Gallery clearly fits into that category, but instead of getting banned from the App Store, it will probably be featured on the front page of iTunes soon.

My favorite part of this story is Apple’s tagline for the new app: “Great ads. On-demand. In your pocket.” It’s like Apple wants to test the limits of its public appeal by trying to convince people that looking at advertisements in your free time is a cool thing to do.

And when you think about it that way, Apple is being pretty generous with the iAd Gallery. They could easily charge people money for the privilege of looking at this Apple-approved sexy spam, but instead they are giving the app away for free! This amazing deal might not last forever, so grab it while you still can and get ready to be brainwashed!

Back when I was a young lad (a stunningly handsome one, if you must know), there were two revenue models for digital content and apps: 1. You got the stuff for free and had to deal with obnoxious advertisements, or 2. You paid a small fee (usually one-time, but sometimes recurring) and got to enjoy the service without the annoyance of ads.

Well apparently I am no longer a young lad, because the New York Times has decided that the market has changed and demands a new revenue model. The newspaper’s online pay wall went live this week (my initial reaction to it can be found here), and while it has attracted a lot of discussion and debate, there has not been a lot of talk about advertising.

Specifically, I’m talking about the fact that the New York Times wants you to pay $455 a year for access to its almighty website and mobile apps – and even after that, you are still required to look at all of the ads you had to look at when it was free. If I’m inviting the New York Times that far into my bank account, I should at least get to read the content I want without having poor marketing schemes shoved down my throat.

Thanks to its failing paper product, the New York Times could not support its entire operation on ad revenue alone. I get that – it’s completely understandable. But the logical solution would have been to switch to a paid model, or offer both as separate options. Combining them into one super model supported by both advertising and subscriptions makes the New York Times look desperate, greedy, and just a little bit evil.