, Columnists
Ad Giants Hear Amazon-Sized Footsteps
It has assembled tools and services that could threaten Google and Facebook's grip on the market.
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From Amazon.com Inc.'s origins as a virtual bookstore, it became an online mall for every product imaginable. Then the company stealthily built a computing utility business that now generates the majority of its profit, and it seemingly has ambitions to do much, much more.
Without much fanfare, CEO Jeff Bezos has set his sights on yet another market: the $200 billion online advertising industry that is dominated by Alphabet Inc.'s Google and Facebook Inc. While Amazon's annual ad revenue is relatively small at an estimated $1.2 billion, the company has assembled a Google-like set of advertising tools and services that could become Amazon's next big thing.