Amazons growing advertising business is poised to challenge the stranglehold Google and Facebook have on the internets ad dollars, thanks to its growing dominance in e-commerce and growing presence in the media world.
Amazon still makes the bulk of its money through the sales of goods and its widely used cloud computing business, Amazon Web Services, but its advertising business is growing.
Amazon has already become something of a corporate boogeyman, with shares in other companies dropping sharply anytime the e-commerce giant enters a new industry.
Collin Colburn, an analyst at the market research firm Forrester Research, warned that Amazon could do the same thing to the advertising industry.
But eMarketer projects Amazon will leapfrog them all with a familiar Bezos-approved strategy patience in the short term with an eye on dominance in the long term.
A big part of Amazons advantage is its use as a search engine, with one consumer survey finding almost half of all product searches start on Amazon rather than Google.
The company can serve up search ads alongside its search results that point consumers to sponsored posts of just about any product.
Amazons sales team is also selling ads on the homepage of Amazon Fire tablets, Kindle e-readers and the Amazon-owned movie database IMDB.com.
Richman said that Amazon could end up putting marketers in the same position as Google and Facebook did with little leverage in the market.
Original article