Look Out Google and Facebook. Amazon’s Little Ad Business Is Growing Fast

During the annual Cannes Lions advertising conference on the French Riviera, the five-star Carlton Hotel becomes a deal-making hub, where in recent years the likes of Google and Facebook have joined industry heavyweights such as WPP and Interpublic Group as online advertising booms. This year, a third tech giant moved onto the must-meet list: Amazon.com.

The online retailer booked a seventh-floor suite to promote its nascent ad business. Though the site is the web’s largest online retailer, it lags far behind Google, Facebook, and even Microsoft in ad revenue. While Amazon is in some respects just one big advertisement for all the goods it sells, it has done little to carve out ad space on its pages. That’s changing as the company has better understood the value of the insights it has into what consumers buy. “They’re sitting on a goldmine of valuable data,” says Jason Heller, head of digital marketing operations at consulting firm McKinsey & Co.