Throughout 2017 people have been talking about how Google & Facebook have a ‘duopoly’ on the digital ad industry, and that it would be very difficult for any company to step in and gain a significant market share. It seems that Amazon sees that as a challenge that they would like to take on. They have been talking about expanding their advertising products to include options for third parties to advertise on many different sites.
Amazon has the resources at their disposal to enter into this very competitive market, and become successful. They are already working with third-party mobile ad companies including Kargo to help link up advertising campaigns on televisions and mobile screens.
The Interactive Advertising Bureau says that US ad revenue reached $20.8 billion in Q2 of 2017, which is a bump of 7.4%. This is obviously an attractive market for Amazon to expand into.
One of the big questions on this would be whether Amazon would be stealing market share from Google, Facebook, a combination of both, or from smaller ad networks that already make up only a small percentage of the overall digital ad market.