Amazon readying an attack on Google’s ad business
Retailer Developing Ad Sales Program in a Challenge to Google and Microsoft

Amazon has told potential ad partners that it may begin testing a new placement platform later this year.

Amazon.com Inc. is gearing up to more directly challenge Google Inc.’s dominance of the online advertising market, developing its own software for placing ads online that could leverage its knowledge of millions of Web shoppers.

That system could challenge Google’s $50 billion-a-year advertising business and Microsoft Corp.’s, they added.

“Amazon could use the data it has about buying behavior to help make these ads much more effective,” said Karsten Weide, an analyst at researcher IDC. “Marketers would love to have another viable option beyond Google and Facebook for their advertising.”

Amazon has told potential ad partners that it may begin testing the new placement platform, dubbed Amazon Sponsored Links, later this year. The plan, these people said, is to make it easier for marketers to reach its nearly 250 million active users.

The two companies have increasingly been treading on the other’s turf as they battle to be the first place that Internet shoppers go to hunt for products and services. Google, for instance, has been invading Amazon’s e-commerce business with it ...

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