Amazon could see its advertising business grow to about $20 billion in 2020, a Cenkos Securities analyst told CNBC.
Amazon's ad business currently holds roughly $3 billion of North America's $200 billion advertising market, Alex DeGroote, media analyst at Cenkos Securities, estimates. Considering North America holds 40 percent of the global advertising market, Mr. DeGroote anticipates by 2020, Amazon will hold an $8 billion ad presence in North America, or $20 billion globally.
Amazon's search advertising would do most of the heavy lifting, rather than its display advertising, due to the amount of products on Amazon's platform, Mr. DeGroote told CNBC. Companies looking to have their products seen first when customers search Amazon could pay the company to feature them.
"I think Amazon will do retail search and take Google to the cleaners on retail search using their estate," Mr. DeGroote told CNBC. "Slowly over time you will use Amazon as your retail search engine rather than Google."
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