Is Amazon Finally Getting Into The Online Ad Market?

This post from Gigaom caught my eye.  In the post, an analyst has an informed suspicion that Amazon is beefing up its capability to extend its current off Amazon network into a full-fledged ad play.  I have been blogging about how Amazon should enter the online display market for quite some time in posts like this.  Could Amazon now be getting serious about competing in this market?  As I pointed in my predictions for 2011, Amazon is by all accounts a top ad network.  My guesstimate is that an Amazon affiliate network has 2 million affiliates generating on average 5,000 impressions per month per publisher, or 120 billion impressions per year.  Amazon starts to take on huge players with its deep knowledge of consumer behavior and its already large base of publishing relationships.