Introduction to the Product
Advertising API
Topics
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Overview of Product Advertising API (p. 5)
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Architectural Overview of Product Advertising API (p. 6)
This introduction to Product Advertising API gives you a detailed summary of this web service. After
reading this section, you should have a good idea of what it offers and how it can fit in with your business.
Overview of Product Advertising API
Amazon has spent over ten years and hundreds of millions of dollars developing a world-class web service
that millions of customers use every day. As a developer, you can build Product Advertising API applications
that leverage this robust, scalable, and reliable technology. You get access to much of the data that is
used by Amazon, including the items for sale, customer reviews, seller reviews, as well as most of the
functionality that you see on www.amazon.com, such as finding items, finding similar items, displaying
customer reviews, and product promotions. In short, Product Advertising API operations open the doors
to Amazon's databases so that you can take advantage of Amazon's sophisticated e-commerce data and
functionality. Build your own web store to sell Amazon items or your own items.
Best of all, Product Advertising API is free. By signing up to become a Product Advertising API developer,
you join the tens of thousands of developers who are already realizing financial gains by creating Product
Advertising API-driven applications and web stores. In 2006, Product Advertising API developers sold
well over $600 million worth of items. Would you like a percentage of that revenue?
Business Model
E-commerce is the practice of conducting business over the Internet. This guide explains in detail how
you can use Product Advertising API operations to create storefronts in which you enable Internet
customers to search for your items, see pictures of them, find related items, get customer reviews, and
purchase items.
With e-commerce, the barrier of distance between the shopper and the store goes away: the local video
store must compete with stores across the country. E-commerce levels the playing field: the web site of
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Product Advertising API Developer Guide
Overview of Product Advertising API