Ryan Tate, Wired

Amazon has reportedly built a lightning-fast platform to deliver highly targeted ads to shoppers who leave Amazon’s virtual selection to peruse other sites.  The company has developed software to analyse your Amazon shopping patterns and then follow you around the web to non-Amazon sites with targeted ads.

Better still for Amazon, it can make additional money acting as a middle man for other advertisers who want to use this technology, especially companies that make products sold through Amazon.

By building its own ad purchasing machine, Amazon is signalling just how serious it has become about selling ads.  With its huge trove of data on user buying habits, the company is especially well positioned to target potential buyers - and clearly knows it.