Amazon has grown into the third-largest seller of web ad space, sneaking up on Google and Facebook in the race for market share. Alexandra Bruell reports for the WSJ:
Amazon. com Inc.’s share of the U.S. digital ad market grew to 10.3% last year from 7.8% in 2019, according to a new report from research firm eMarketer.
The report predicts that Amazon will continue to inch up on market leaders Google, part of Alphabet Inc., and Facebook Inc., a sign brands are increasingly turning to the e-commerce giant to help them reach an expanding base of online shoppers.
Amazon’s U.S. ad revenue last year grew to $15.73 billion, up 52.5% from 2019, eMarketer estimates.
The company’s U.S. digital ad share is still small relative to Google and Facebook’s, which accounted for 28.9% and 25.2% of the business, respectively, in 2020, according to the report.
But Amazon is quickly becoming a viable competitor. It is expected to make up 10.7% of the U.S. digital ad market this year, growing to 11.9% in 2022 and 12.8% in 2023, eMarketer predicts.
Even though the uptick is bolstered by a drastic shift to digital shopping habits during the pandemic, it will likely stick, said Nicole Perrin, a principal analyst at eMarketer.
“This is one of these situations where the pandemic accelerated something that was happening anyway,” she said. “We are expecting pretty notable continued gains in share through at least 2023, specifically looking at the search side.”
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