Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos, at the launch of a new family of Kindle e-readers last September in Santa Monica, Calif.
Visit Amazon.com and you'll find a bevy of recommendations to fill your digital shopping cart: books similar to what you've read on your Kindle or clothes and gadgets based on what else you've looked at.
Now Amazon is tinkering with ad technology that would flash ads for you even when you're not on Amazon sites. And those ads might not even direct shopper back to Amazon's sites.
It's still early days, but if Amazon's new strategy plays out, it could become the Web's next advertising giant. Sure, it already serves up ads on its on site for companies such as electronics maker RCA and beauty care company Olay. But gradually, Amazon is extending its ad-serving technology beyond its own sites and, in the process, competing with the likes of Google, Yahoo, Facebook, and Microsoft.
Unlike those entrenched rivals, Amazon has the sort of consumer data over which certain advertisers drool. The company, with 209 million customers who shopped on the site last month, has nearly two decades worth of shopping data. It doesn't just know what you're searching for on the Web. Amazon has a detailed history of what you bought, when you bought it, and how you paid for it.
The Madison Ave. set call it "intent" data -- and marketers can't wait to get their hands on it.
"Amazon understands better than anyone else what consumers want," said Jeff Lanctot, the chief media officer for Razorfish, the Seattle-based digital marketing agency. "And that's a gold mine for advertisers."
For many, ads are more of an annoyance than a benefit. But Amazon may well be able to deliver relevant ads, in the same way that it can encourage customers to buy that book they didn't know they wanted. The company sees ads as an extension of its mission to help customers find and buy anything they want online
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