Amazon has stolen away Microsoft senior ad exec Lisa Ultzschneider leaving us all to wonder just what kind of advertising aspirations the company has.
Amazon has not commented on what kind of plans it has for Ultzschneider. Rick Aristotle Muarriz at Fool.com speculates that it won’t much involve Amazon.com, but likely the company’s other properties:
Amazon is unlikely to ramp up advertising on its namesake marketplace, but the rules are different for its other dot-com traffic magnets, such as movie hub IMDB.com and Web-trends monitor Alexa.com. Its other recent Web endeavors include the acquisition of booklovers’ social network Shelfari and the launch of its SoundUnwound music wiki.
There’s a lot of billable ad space there for the monetizing. One has to imagine that Amazon’s Askville site or even its A9.com search engine could become higher priorities, if the company had the ad inventory to truly milk the most out of its page views.
That huge background ad spot that IMDB has been utilizing lately is surely a hot property. That is if they’re still using it. I don’t see one of the giant ads on there today.
Despite Amazon’s relative silence on their advertising plans, one can’t help but notice that they seem to be planning something. Valleywag notes that they have been beefing up their NY ad sales staff over the last 4 months.
I wonder if Google will try to get in on that action too.
