Amazon Knows What Brands You Like And Now So Will The Brands

Amazon is a company that understands the value of data, and the Seattle company is about to turn their customer data into an even bigger cash machine by helping brand marketers reach customers, not just on Amazon.com, but on any website.

Jay Habegger, writing in Ad Age, explains why Amazon’s new ad network is big news.

Amazon will now use its huge supply of data to pool consumers into buckets based on the products they looked at or purchased on the retailer’s website. The company will help advertisers reach these consumers with targeted media, using behaviorally targeted display ads to drive them to any URL.

Amazon has more than a decade’s worth of sales and consumer shopping data, so it’s almost a surprise it took the company this long to capitalize on its data and enter the behavioral-targeting space. It’s a great idea that will help marketers find interested consumers, and other retailers are already trying to copy the model. Every online retailer is a media network, even if they don’t know it yet, and there’s plenty of opportunity for retailers of all sizes to copy Amazon’s model.

Habegger also claims that Amazon will compete with most behavioral-targeting networks right off the bat because of the scope of its data, and that the company has an immediate advantage because it is using proprietary data.