Amazon: The New Advertising Platform - Issue #79

In China retail platforms like Taobao and JD.com are already attracting most of the advertising. Now that Amazon wants a piece of the advertising pie in the West - makes total sense to advertise where the buyers are - here is an interesting look at their pitch to agencies. The e-commerce giant is in the business of selling products to shoppers, not selling inventory to brands – a subtle, yet important difference.

More tech company info. Great chart that shows how much revenue tech companies are making per employee. Apple is number one, followed by Facebook and Alphabet. But who’s next? Verisgin, Visa and Mastercard.

Downside of the 16 million shared bicycles in China’s I raved about earlier. Theya re blokcing the sidewalk, people leave them in remote places. So there is a clear dark side to the fierce battle for market share among 70-plus bike share companies backed by a total of more than $1 billion in financing. Chinese ask themselves: what is wrong with us that we are starting to be so impolite. Tech innovation is not always progress I guess.