Sleeping ad giant Amazon finally stirs

SAN FRANCISCO/NEW YORK: Amazon.com Inc is known in the advertising industry as the "sleeping giant" because the world's largest Internet retailer harbours a trove of consumer-spending data that many marketers have called an unrealised opportunity.

Now it's awakening to the potential. After running ads on its own website for years, the company has taken the first steps toward becoming a true Internet advertising network, using the knowledge garnered from its data to place targeted ads for some of the world's biggest advertisers across thousands of other websites.