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Amazon Has Already Become Something of a Corporate Boogeyman -- and Now It Could Be Bringing Its Industry Disruption To Advertising (nbcnews.com) 65

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
When Jeff Bezos arrives as expected at the Sun Valley conference -- the year's most exclusive meeting of media industry leaders -- he'll know much more about his fellow media moguls than they know about him. And that has them worried, especially as Amazon's advertising business picks up. From a report: Amazon's growing advertising business is poised to challenge the stranglehold Google and Facebook have on the internet's ad dollars, thanks to its growing dominance in e-commerce and growing presence in the media world. Google knows what consumers are interested in, and Facebook knows who you are. But Amazon has what many in the advertising industry regard as the most important piece of the puzzle: what people buy. And the e-commerce giant is starting to capitalize on that data in a big way. "It is definitely growing as a media company, but it is surging in terms of ad revenue," said Advertising Age editor Brian Braiker. "The scary part for marketers is that [data] is all walled off, and if you want the special sauce you have to play by Amazon's rules." 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. In the first three months of 2018, Amazon reported revenue for its "other" segment, which is largely advertising, rose 139 percent, to $2 billion.
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Amazon Has Already Become Something of a Corporate Boogeyman -- and Now It Could Be Bringing Its Industry Disruption To Advertis More

Amazon Has Already Become Something of a Corporate Boogeyman -- and Now It Could Be Bringing Its Industry Disruption To Advertis

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  • Evil gets compeitition! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    So the biggest evildoers on the internet - Google and Facebook - are about to get competition from a company that actually sells products to the people who go to their website (instead of selling the people who go to their website as the product)?

    About damn time.

    I hope Fuckerberg is shitting blood.

    • I don't see how amazon can compete with their: "You've just bought a chainsaw. Looks like you're interested in chainsaws. Here are some chainsaws that I'm going to keep suggesting for the next 2 years. And just to rub it in, I'll also suggest the same chainsaw you just bought but for less."

  • That's fine. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Sunday July 08, 2018 @03:36PM (#56912962)

    I don't think the advertising world could get any worse than it already is, so if Amazon starts driving them out of business then I'm all for it.

  • Just like it did with smartphones? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by locater16 ( 2326718 ) on Sunday July 08, 2018 @03:40PM (#56912982)
    Alexa is now selling less than Google home, much less. Amazon's smartphone foray was a total flop. Its self driving car tech is, somehow, behind even Apple. For some reason it decided to make video games. If you want to check on how that's going ask yourself if you even knew that before reading this.

    Amazon might be able to "disrupt" industries outside the tech industry. But its track record of taking on other tech companies is dismal. I don't see this changing anytime soon.
    • Remember amazon prime video, the "netflix killer"?

    • Re:Just like it did with smartphones? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by pots ( 5047349 ) on Sunday July 08, 2018 @07:41PM (#56913870)
      They did pretty well with webhosting, they did pretty well with ebook readers, they're the only real rival to Google Play on Android, they're the only real rival to Netflix (unless you count Hulu). Alexa may be selling less than Google Home but its market share is still much greater.

      Amazon does a lot of me-too stuff, like Microsoft. It doesn't always work out, but they've had plenty of successes. The trouble is, they also emulate the worst aspects of the companies that they copy - they spy on you just as much as Google does, and they're just as controlling as Apple. So Amazon winds up being worse than either.

    • Alexa is now selling less than Google home, much less.

      And using the same approach, I could claim that Google home is selling less now than in 2017Q4:

      https://www.canalys.com/newsro... [canalys.com]

      (Your conclusion that Alexa is currently selling less than Google home, based on the single quarter of 2018Q1, may not necessarily be true, as both products saw drops of > 50% in units sold between 2017Q4 and 2018Q1)

      Amazon might be able to "disrupt" industries outside the tech industry. But its track record of taking on other tech companies is dismal. I don't see this changing anytime soon.

      You seem to be ignoring AWS ...

  • Based on the absolutely useless / unrelated / random "recommendations" Amazon suggest for my Kindle library, I'd say that none of the others big advertisers are exactly quaking in their boots.

  • It is too early to tell [and, I am not a lawyer], but there are aspects of this story which may well fall foul of the new General Data Protection Regulation from the EU, or, perhaps, the related law just passed in California.

    Among the key principles of the GDPR are concepts such as the "Lawful Basis for Processing" and "Consent"...

    Here, the parent is suggesting that because Amazon is the platform on which people make purchases, "Amazon knows what you actually buy" and therefore this gives Amazon the a

  • Bezos and Amazon are setup as Vertical Integrators like the Robber Barrons of the 19th Century. Not content to own a simple steel mill Carnegie realized he could drive costs down by owning the coal mines, the railroad and everything else that supplied his steel empire. Bezo's is following the tradition, not content with a marketplace of goods he's moving into delivery of those goods and production of the goods themselves. He will continue to expand these things just like he'll expand the digital side of the business by moving into advertising and all kinds of other services.

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