Amazon Pursuing Mobile Video Ads, Strengthening Its Viability as Duopoly Alternative

Video advertising has been the hot thing for long enough that it’s now passé to refer to the pivot to video. It’s about time, then, that the Big Tech company hoping to break into the digital ad market dominated by Google and Facebook added video to its inventory.

That was the news in digital marketing on Thursday, as Amazon announced it would sell video ads on its mobile app. If Amazon can get the mechanics of the advertising business together, it will be an attractive ad platform for media buyers hoping to reach its wide and wealthy Prime user base.

Amazon’s retail business accounts for about half of all online sales in the U.S. The company’s ad business has been growing at rates of over 100% YOY, and eMarketer projected in 2018 that Amazon will emerge as a legitimate third player to Google and Facebook by 2020, grabbing an estimated 7% of the digital ad market.