Amazon Is Now Aggressively Going After Google’s Core Business

Dan Frommer:

Amazon also is aggressively building out its advertising technology portfolio. The company is “developing its own software for placing ads online that could leverage its knowledge of millions of web shoppers,” the WSJ reports (paywall). Amazon supposedly has told potential partners that it could start testing a “new placement platform, dubbed Amazon Sponsored Links” this year. Amazon also recently debuted a new service that runs banner ads on other sites, called Amazon CPM Ads. (“CPM” is ad-industry jargon for “cost per thousand” ad impressions — referring to the way that banner ads often are priced and publishers often are paid.)

Together, these services broadly sound like Google’s AdWords product, which allows advertisers to buy sponsored links on Google and other sites, and AdSense, which is Google’s ad network for publishers. And Amazon is investing in more: The company has 45 job listings for its Ad Platform team, ranging from general manager to various engineering and sales roles.

★ Tuesday, 26 August 2014