Most of us probably don’t pay too much attention to the hotlinks that accompany several digital ads we see in tablet editions of the magazines we read, but for all that we ignore them advertisers are being charged a pretty penny just to ensure that the link is active should we actually notice the ads.

According to Ad Age, Meredith Corporation, which publishes several homemaker-centric titles like Better Homes and Gardens, Family Circle, and EveryDay with Rachael Ray, has decided to charge advertisers $1,500 just to make sure that the hotlink included in the ad is active. In a statement from Meredith obtained by Ad Age, the publisher explained the decision:

Meredith has made a significant investment in our Enhanced for Tablet editions, providing consumers with expanded content, interactive features and a dynamic user experience. This fall, print advertisers will now be offered an opportunity to appear in the EFT editions of Parents, Better Homes and Gardens and Fitness at no cost. If an advertiser’s creative includes a URL and it is their preference to make that link ‘live,’ there will be a $1,500 production charge. This cost is a minimal production fee associated with the current production process it takes to enhance an advertiser’s creative.

While Meredith’s $1,500 charge just to have a working hotlink in an advertisement certainly isn’t the steepest price tag around – Conde Nast’s asking fee is $5,000 – it’s still quite a lot of money, especially when considering other publishers either includes the hotlink fee as part of the original advertising cost or, better, some publishers simply don’t add any secondary cost for the hotlinks to work.

Still, $1,500 as a minimal production fee? I mean, I know enough HTML that I can make a word or phrase into a hyperlink but I could hardly justify charging $1.50 let alone 1,000 times that just to make the link work , so I’ll just assume that Meredith or Conde Nast are conjuring some very complicated sorcery to make these advertisers’ hyperlinks work.

Given that Meredith also just announced that it will be making many of its popular magazines available via Google Play makes it all the most tempting for advertisers to (presumably begrudgingly) fork over the money for the ad space on tablet editions now that the tablet audience for Better Homes and Gardens just got significantly bigger.