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Advertising is one of Amazon’s largest and most profitable business units, fwiw. https://finance.yahoo.com/amphtml/news/amazon-is-quietly-building-the-most-pow

Advertising is one of Amazon’s largest and most profitable business units, fwiw. https://finance.yahoo.com/amphtml/news/amazon-is-quietly-building-the-most-powerful-advertising-machine-in-the-world-135753395.html https://finance.yahoo.com/amphtml/news/amazon-is-quietly-bui...

stakhanov 3y ago
It's hard for me to relate this accounting category that the article is talking about to actual Amazon products. I mean, of course you can rebrand the "marketplace" concept as "advertising", but which of Amazon's products would I be using, if I just have a link that I want people to click on, and I assume that my target audience is not already on the amazon retail website? -- It sort of depends on what you define as "advertising", but to me it means shoving stuff in my face that I didn't want shoved in my face. If I go to "amazon.com", I'm voluntarily saying "sell me stuff, I actually need to buy something right now".
- therealpygon 3y ago
  You seem to be confusing Amazon (the company), with only Amazon (the online retail website). The Amazon Company has a number of advertising vehicles outside of just their retail website. There is also a significant amount of advertising within their retail website as well. Have you not noticed all of the “sponsored” listings and other types of ads for (often inferior) products to show up under your search terms? Beyond that, “ad revenue” is often the vehicle for accounting data brokering due to the significant amount of tracking they do across all their various sites. There is also direct video ad revenue that comes from Twitch, is planned for Amazon Prime, so on and so forth. There is no pick-and-choose in the way advertising would be defined, like you suggest. Advertising is just that; content that has either been paid for another party to show, has received payment to show, or the analytics/tracking data used to influence buyers or is marketed to sellers and other companies. By your definition, google’s ads in search results and targeted in websites wouldn’t be advertising either, because you [paraphrasing] “asked for it”.

stakhanov 3y ago

It's hard for me to relate this accounting category that the article is talking about to actual Amazon products. I mean, of course you can rebrand the "marketplace" concept as "advertising", but which of Amazon's products would I be using, if I just have a link that I want people to click on, and I assume that my target audience is not already on the amazon retail website? -- It sort of depends on what you define as "advertising", but to me it means shoving stuff in my face that I didn't want shoved in my face. If I go to "amazon.com", I'm voluntarily saying "sell me stuff, I actually need to buy something right now".

therealpygon 3y ago
You seem to be confusing Amazon (the company), with only Amazon (the online retail website). The Amazon Company has a number of advertising vehicles outside of just their retail website. There is also a significant amount of advertising within their retail website as well. Have you not noticed all of the “sponsored” listings and other types of ads for (often inferior) products to show up under your search terms? Beyond that, “ad revenue” is often the vehicle for accounting data brokering due to the significant amount of tracking they do across all their various sites. There is also direct video ad revenue that comes from Twitch, is planned for Amazon Prime, so on and so forth. There is no pick-and-choose in the way advertising would be defined, like you suggest. Advertising is just that; content that has either been paid for another party to show, has received payment to show, or the analytics/tracking data used to influence buyers or is marketed to sellers and other companies. By your definition, google’s ads in search results and targeted in websites wouldn’t be advertising either, because you [paraphrasing] “asked for it”.