The Wall Street Journal reports that Barnes & Noble is launching an advertising campaign for the Nook, featuring a television commercial showing a girl reading as she grows up (as well as radio, print, and Internet ads). This will mark Barnes & Noble’s first television commercial since launching the BN.com website in 1996.
Barnes & Noble seems to be shelling out some serious cash outlay on this, as the Journal article notes the TV ad will be airing during such popular fare as American Idol.
The article then goes into further detail about the advertising and other marketing that competitors in the e-book and tablet computer markets are carrying out. I find it interesting that the article talks about Amazon’s Kindle placement in Target stores—
Barnes & Noble says the ability to sell its Nook in its stores gives it a competitive advantage against Amazon’s Kindle because consumers can come to their stores and test the device. That advantage may be short-lived, since Target said Wednesday it will start selling Kindle in some of its stores this weekend.
—but does not mention Barnes & Noble’s similar placement of the Nook in Best Buy.
Speaking of which, I was at my local Best Buy day before yesterday and found its new Nook display, next to the Sony Reader display and directly across from the Wii playing Beatles Rock Band. I was gratified to see that their e-book readers are displayed prominently in a fairly high-traffic area.
With an estimated three million e-book readers sold last year, and six million (plus three million iPads) to sell this year, the e-book market is definitely heating up. It will be interesting to see who comes out a winner.
