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Technology Stocks : Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Glenn D. Rudolph who wrote (12221)	8/2/1998 6:33:00 PM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Respond to of 164684

* Various bullish arguments that have been trotted out to justify the stock price: 1. AMZN will get ad revenue by as others advertise on their site. * Maybe. But is AMZN's customer list has an advantage it's that it targets book (and music and video) customers. Who would want to advertise here? Other book, cd and video merchants. Unlikely AMZN will do that. * Maybe. But at the quarterly conference call, J. Bezos stated that AMZN will still be spending on advertising for itself at portal sites 3 years out. Sounds like a continued expenditure not revenue. * If the purpose of successful internet advertising to get someone to leave the advertising site for the advertiser's site, then the more successful AMZN is at that - the less likely they'll have concluded a sale. * Some consumers might be offended by seeing advertising on the site and it would let Barnes & Noble and Borders advertise their web sites as "commercial free." * David Gardner's (of The Motley Fool) argument regarding Amazon selling high-margin advertising of other firms on AMZN's site (he started saying this last October in a Fool Portfolio Report) seems foolish in light of the company having made no indication at all at the 7/21/98 conference call that it expected future advertising revenues. * A B.T. Alex Brown analyst, who asked about how Amazon will deal with portals, (given the large associate and ad expenses it incurs for banners at YHOO, other portals, and the new Intuit agreement), and how it will become more of a portal site itself. To which Bezos, in part replied: "We don't feel that after three years that we will be done with portals." In other words, Amazon.com will continue to rely on them to do advertising.