Amazon’s Next Big Business Is Selling You

In a recent note to investors, analysts at Baird Equity Research said they estimated Amazon would generate anywhere from $500 million to $1 billion in advertising revenue this year. Amazon won’t break out those numbers, and the estimate doesn’t put Amazon anywhere near the tens of billions Google makes from ads every year. But for a company whose main business isn’t selling ads but selling stuff, a billion dollars is far from nothing. And Amazon is just getting started.

The company has kept its advertising ambitions mostly to itself until earlier this month when a high-ranking Amazon executive made a standing-room-only appearance at Advertising Week, Madison Avenue’s biggest annual ad industry gathering. Amazon Vice President of Global Sales Lisa Utzschneider reportedly touted everything from display ads on ad-supported Kindles to the company’s ad-targeting data based on clicks not just on Amazon.com but other popular Amazon-owned sites like Zappos, IMDB, and Diapers.com. More at Wired.

Scary.