Amazon sponsored links pits Amazon against Google and Facebook

[Transcendence]

Amazon’s built a successful online retail business, as can be seen by Google’s own Shopping Express shipping business that has expanded in recent weeks to include Barnes & Noble local retail stores. But the new front today in the race to the top is mobile ads: mobile ads are a booming business, and search engine giant Google happens to be in an advantageous position to rise to the top.

While Google still dominates the mobile ad space, the company’s mobile ad share is being chipped away by Facebook, whose 1.2 billion+ user base gives the social networking company more users to target, more data to catch, and more ads to send. With all the “likes†registered at Facebook on a daily basis, and all the photos, statuses, and discussions carried on at Facebook, the social networking site is poised to rise to the top to prevent Google from having all of the glory for itself.

 

Well, Facebook may need to worry about a new company now: Amazon. In a report provided by the Wall Street Journal, Amazon has decided to enter into the mobile ad business with a new service called Amazon Sponsored Links.

 

The new service aims to provide sponsored links (hence the name) from those who seek to advertise or promote their products or services. Whereas Google’s mobile ad share stems from its search engine and user searches, Amazon’s mobile ad share, and profits would come from the company’s data behind user buying activity and searches. When consumers use Amazon to search for and buy items, the company collects data behind their interests. This type of demographic, interest, and shopping and buying information can be used to target ads for the right users and thus, bring in more money.

 

After all, a customer who likes shopping for shoe bargains will find shoe ads much more appealing than an ad about buying a smartphone or tablet. Someone who’s interested in books may also have an interest in cooking, so Amazon could appeal to consumers with multiple interests and increase the chances of user clicks on a sponsored ad at the online retailer’s website. Amazon’s already taking advantage of its massive user base, and the Amazon Fire phone now makes it easy to use the Fire phone’s “FireFly†feature to help a customer find any item in a local store on Amazon’s online retail site (and purchase it) within a matter of seconds.

 

Amazon’s Sponsored Links will operate similar to the Google Adwords campaign, and Jeff Bezos and his company will roll out the service as early as the end of this year. Amazon just entered the smartphone race with its Fire phone offering that provides a 13MP camera with optical image stabilization (OIS), as well as a 4.7-inch Gorilla Glass display with HD resolution and four parallax cameras that provide a faux-3D motion that mimics that of Apple’s parallax motion in iOS 7. The Fire phone is currently available in the US exclusively through AT&T for $199 with a two-year agreement, and those who want to purchase the phone can buy it off-contract for around $649.