On April 25, according to foreign media reports, Amazon is a retail giant in the United States. However, in the online advertising industry, it is regarded as a "sleeping giant." It possesses a vast amount of consumer data but has not yet fully utilized it.However, Amazon is now beginning to awaken and realizes the potential of the advertising market. After displaying ads on its own site for many years, the company is taking its first step towards becoming a genuine internet advertising network, planning to use its data resources to help the world's largest advertisers display ads on thousands of external websites.Amazon established a mobile ad network alliance at the end of last year, and this network has already started displaying ads within apps on iOS and Android smartphones and tablets.For Amazon, the advertising business represents a new revenue stream with higher profit margins than its retail operations. For Google, Facebook, and other leading advertisers, Amazon poses a threat due to its possession of massive amounts of data that they lack.Google knows what people are searching for, Facebook knows what people like and who their friends are, and Amazon knows that you searched for running shoes last week and also purchased a pair a year ago. This information is highly coveted by advertisers.Jeff Lanctot, Chief Media Officer of digital advertising agency Razorfish, stated: "In today's marketing world, data is gold, and Amazon is Fort Knox (the U.S. Treasury's location for storing gold)." He has collaborated with Amazon for over a decade and found that Amazon's attitude towards advertising has been "either full commitment or no involvement." Now, Amazon plans to make a significant push into the advertising sector.Amazon will enter the "red ocean" of online advertising. According to eMarketer statistics, Google, Yahoo, AOL, and Facebook collectively occupy two-thirds of the U.S. online advertising market. However, industry insiders believe that Amazon's vast amount of consumer information will be an advantage.According to estimates by Ben Schachter, an analyst at Macquarie, Amazon's retail business has a profit margin of 5%, whereas online advertising has a profit margin as high as 20% to 30%.This Thursday, Amazon will release its latest quarterly earnings report, and analysts will be looking for performance indicators in high-profit businesses such as advertising and cloud computing. Amazon has consistently foregone short-term results to invest in long-term growth. Analysts estimate that Amazon's online advertising business currently generates $500 million in annual revenue. A former senior executive at Amazon, David Selinger, recently predicted that Amazon's advertising revenue would reach $1 billion this year.In Amazon's revenue (75 billion USD), the advertising business only contributes a small portion, but in the long term, this part of the revenue is expected to become substantial. eMarketer predicts that by 2015, the U.S. online advertising market will reach $50 billion, and Amazon also hopes to increase its share of the pie.Since 2011, advertisements on Amazon's own website have grown rapidly, but Wall Street is more focused on its ability to display ads on external websites. Starting from the fourth quarter of 2010, Amazon began showing ads on external sites, and it wasn't until mid-last year that the business was named "Amazon Advertising Platform."It is reported that Amazon currently displays ads on thousands of websites in the U.S., UK, and Germany. Amazon executives refused to disclose the names of these websites but mentioned that Amazon purchases ad spaces through website publishers or ad trading platforms and then uses its self-developed technology to deliver real-time ads to these positions.Mark Pavia, an executive at media procurement company StarcomUSA, stated that the consumer data possessed by Amazon can help advertisers enhance marketing effectiveness because they can target ads only to consumers who are likely to make purchases.