Amazons display advertising team begin Re-Targeting, with Looksmart?

Seeking Alpha Analyst Since 2006
'In recent job listings for the Amazon’s display advertising team, the company says':
The Ryan Kim article (via GigaOm) then points out that Ben Schachter of Macquerie Research noted (also), 'that other illuminating quotes from Amazon include':“Amazon.com is continuing to build out its Worldwide Online Display Advertising business to tap into the growing online advertising market. Display Ads is one of Amazon’s fastest growing and most profitable businesses.
We plan to build next generation advertising products by leveraging Amazon’s world-class personalization technologies, unparalleled customer data and engaging video content.”
“Display Ads is one of the hottest tech sectors… Amazon is uniquely positioned to leverage our culture of customer obsession…......and change the industry.”
“The New Ad Products group was recently formed to build advertising systems to address new market segments.”
From adexchanger.com today comes the most interesting story (and, written by John Ebbert), that Amazon Begins Display Ad Retargeting.
In this most informative (albeit brief) piece, John says that it .....'looks like Amazon has started retargeting as last week's news from analyst Ben Schachter of Macquerie Research (via GigaOm) may just be a hint at what's happening inside the e-commerce giant'.
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Clearly (says John), the supply source is from Google's DoubleClick Ad Exchange.
John Ebbert then asks the next question, himself:
"Who's doing the bidding for Amazon? It would seem in-house bidding capabilities are likely given the company appears focused on building out a larger display ad, audience buying team."
Now while you may be musing away on that all important question, the following is worth even stronger consideration, possibly (?):
The importance of an INDEPENDENT operation
< Today you see both media company and services provider housed under the same roof in many cases, and no place is that more so than at Google.
Certainly the company earns the majority of its revenue from its media properties, such as google.com and YouTube, but it also has a really robust business in advertiser services, most prominently licensing the DoubleClick technology and also in its ad network business AdSense, where it sells ads on behalf of smaller publishers.
So how does that get reconciled over the next decade or two, where they are acting both as adviser and also have a strong interest in collecting many of those advertising dollars themselves? I think that's a really interesting question for companies like Google over the next few years.>
www.twst.com/notes/articles/acg801.html
Amazon MUST protect it's own 'Gold-mine' of DATA, right?
In this blog-post [Amazon Ad Network | Hoo-ville] the writer points out (5 May 2010), that ... Amazon is arguably the most recognized brand in commerce online. - - According to compete, the company sees north of 73MM unique users monthly.
Now read on.
Today's news that LookSmart's Dr. Jean-Yves Dexmier is to speak at ad:tech on Wednesday and that Dr. Dexmier is an active public speaker, and has published several articles on performance marketing.
finance.yahoo.com/news/LookSmarts-Dr-Jea...
The foot-note ("About LookSmart:") tells of a latest emphasis (coming from Looksmart) on the very topic the Looksmart CEO is to talk about:
< LookSmart is an online search advertising network solutions company that provides performance solutions for online search advertisers & online publishers. LookSmart offers advertisers targeted, performance based search advertising via its Advertiser Network; - - and an Ad Center platform for customizable private-label advertiser solutions for online publishers.>
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And about the "Performance Solutions" provided for advertisers and publishers?
Within my recent instapost [Big Digital Advertisers to bring Exchange Buying 'In-House', with?] the importance of both Data & Looksmart's unique ability to provide that opportunity in "re-targeting" users, across it total global reach was highlighted and has been stressed as being a most important 'edge' - - that Looksmart's fully independent AdCenter marketplace can provide to both advertisers and publishers.
seekingalpha.com/instablog/36191-looking...
What of the Scale of Looksmart's Marketplace (plus- - I think it's fair to include AppNexus Data in terms of the "re-targeting of users" and certainly, in the 'long-tail'), IF the likes of an Amazon.com can then get to be included? (And yes, that's besides the Microsoft/Yahoo combined site inventory, that will [there's little doubt, I feel] become available for such [blind] re-targeting of users, across the web).
[Facebook? - They are still in their own "Dreamtime", I feel]
Note a following "tweet" from VP of sales, The Rubicon Project.
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Now ....
Within an investor presentation (back in May 2010 - current report) Looksmart's AdCenter management platform was (itself) claimed to be .........'currently processing about 2B queries/day'. - - This (itself) would then equate to some 60bn queries handled/month......
In a short time now, the fully independent (and 'blind' to all) Looksmart marketplace will surely 'dwaft' the likes of The Rubicon Project (and any other-including Google), in terms of data on available impressions - to then begin to work on, re-targeting with.
In the same report linked above, Looksmart had also told of a part of it's customer base being:
Direct Advertisers and Agencies
Transaction-based: CPA (Cost-per-acquisition)
Pageview-based: CPV (Cost-per-view)
Sooner than later the "market" (and many of the 'so-called' experts in the market) will get to understand the very 'unique' position Looksmart commands in that secondary or, the remnant (backfill), marketplace.
["So-called" remnant (backfill), marketplace, that is!]
I strongly maintain that it's Looksmart who gets (or, fills) that role of supplying inter-operability-as described above (& then provide unified management and reporting) across the entire web!
And that it may well have been 'pre-empted' in the following passage.. Taken from an article featuring Criteo, the very 'crowned prince' of re-targeting! (I feel)
< Personalized retargeting is the process by which it is possible to [re-?] reach non-converting visitors to your site. - Ads to product pages that users have visited but can be targeted to the same user over a period of 30-90 days - via a backfill advertising network.>
blog.searchenginewatch.com/110308-083000
LOOK: 4:00PM EDT: $1.70

ps; The Frank Addante challenge 2 display ad industry: Realize True Value of Digital - $200BN is waiting! #LetsFixIt http://bit.ly/dMjIe9
LC
Disclosure: Long LOOK and so happy to be so, too!
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