If you happen to head over to Amazon.com this morning, you’ll be greeted with a giant ad for the Kindle Fire HD. That, in and of itself, is not really news. What is interesting is that the ad is a direct blast at Apple’s recently unveiled iPad mini.

“Much more for much less,” is the catch phrase here. The ad takes the form of a side-by-side comparison of the two devices. Amazon hits on the Kindle Fire’s victory in pixel density, speaker quality, and HD media options.

And it also hits on the biggest difference: the price. The Kindle Fire HD starts at $199 while the cheapest version on the iPad mini comes in at $329. The front page ad also includes a giant quote from Gizmodo calling Apple “ballsy”

Here’s the ad as it appears on Amazon.com:

That price. It’s been the talk of people who follow this type of stuff since the big launch event last Tuesday. Right after the event, Apple’s stock price took a big hit – and some blamed it on the high price tag of the mini. Apple’s Phil Schiller came out and defended the price, basically employing the “it’s worth it and Apple fans will pay for it because they’ve payed premium prices in the past” argument.

This is a pretty direct swipe at Apple, and all of the comparisons are accurate. Amazon is indeed highlighting where its tablet wins. But as TUAW points out, Amazon does “forget” some points where Apple wins out, however. This includes the addition of a rear-facing camera, 64GB capacity models, and 4G/LTE availability. Then again, it is an ad for the Kindle Fire.

The ad itself is pretty ballsy – with its direct language and targeted attack on the iPad mini. Will it pay off? As of right now, we’ve already started to see shipping times for Apple’s smaller tablet slip to two weeks, which suggests that the iPad Mini is at least seeing buzz relative to Apple’s other tablets (although we’re never really sure what the initial stock was at launch).