Sources: Amazon plans to expand ad offerings in 2018, especially on search and video products, and increase off platform ad sales, with ad tech firms like Kargo
if the advertising budget was big enough.” <how is this even possible?> http://twitter.com/... Alex Kantrowitz / @kantrowitz : Amazon's purchase intent data incredibly valuable to advertisers. Will challenge FB and Google. http://twitter.com/... Hayden Capital / @haydencapital : $AMZN taking a page out of $BABA's playbook. This could be a huge revenue source for Amazon if it works... For those who don't know, 60% of Alibaba's revs are from advertising, and it captured 32% of total digital ad spend in 2017. http://www.cnbc.com/... Thanks: @mattrosoff
Context & Ripple Effects
At the end of 2017, Amazon was still reporting its ad business inside an 'other' bucket — but the plan CNBC sources describe (search and video products, off-platform sales via ad tech firms like Kargo) reads as a deliberate push to convert purchase-intent data into a third force against the Facebook-Google duopoly, with commentators explicitly invoking Alibaba's playbook, where advertising drives roughly 60% of revenue.
The arc that followed validated the bet quickly: within months, 'other' sales jumped 139% to $2.03B in Q1 2018 and Amazon began testing display ads that let merchants buy spots across other sites and apps while pulling back from buying Google shopping ads. By 2022 the business was large enough that Amazon broke out advertising services revenue for the first time — $31.2B for FY 2021 — and it has kept compounding double-digit growth through the mid-2020s.
First-order effects
- Advertisers gain access to Amazon's purchase-intent data across search and video placements, plus off-platform inventory sold through partners like Kargo — directly targeting budgets previously split between Facebook and Google.
Second-order effects
- Google loses on two fronts: Amazon competes for its ad buyers while simultaneously reducing its own spending on Google shopping ads, and merchants get a new channel to buy display reach beyond Amazon's own properties.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, digital advertising restructures from a two-platform market into one where commerce platforms monetize transaction data as their core profit engine — the Alibaba model transplanted to Western retail.
The trend: Commerce platforms are converting purchase-intent data into advertising businesses that grow from side revenue into a structural challenge to the search-and-social duopoly.