Amazon Contextual Advertising Network?
Chris Beasley (Aspen) at Site Point has the scoop on a new contextual advertising service that Amazon is working on, which would be somewhat of a competitor to Google AdWords and Yahoo Publisher Network. Instead of some cheesey new vehicle to deliver Amazon.com product links via their Amazon Associates Affiliate Program, Chris says that Amazon is working on actually setting up a true advertising network.
One of the main reasons for the launch would be that Amazon is interested in cutting out Google as the middle man between advertisers and contextually targeted ads on Amazon.com. And with a strong group of advertisers already active in advertising via Amazon, the natural next step will be branching out to Amazon’s strong family of web publishing partners.
It is known that Amazon currently get’s sponsored links for their own sites from Google, but apparently they wish to take out the middleman and break out on their own. The fact is that while Amazon has a high gross revenue, they have really thin profit margins, whereas Google and even eBay have much better profit margins.
If (and IF) Amazon does goe down the direction of launching a contextual advertising network that would give the publishing world a list of major players to choose from including :
Google AdSense
Yahoo Publisher Network
MSN AdCenter (if they also launch publisher network)
Kanoodle BrightAds (getting larger day by day)
AdBrite
Chitika
and a handful of others.
Too bad publishers would more than likely be restricted to running only one for of contextual ads on their site at one time. Could you imagine trying to stay within the TOS of all of these networks and signing that many checks?
