Unlike say, consumer grade CPUs or specific video games.
They are just following the money, it might not make sense to an individual, but product recommendations are optimised for sales based on historical data.
A TV seems excessive though, but maybe that's just me. I mean it was a $700 TV, how much money does Amazon think I have to buy two of them?
The fact is, I assume Amazon really doesn't care about the ad business. They've offloaded that via affiliate links to third parties (a smart move).
Putting more effort into offering ad targeting now seems less about making money and more about draining value from Google and Facebook.
Amazon has always been driven by volume. Get enough of it, and no one else can survive.
From that perspective, selling ad impressions is... tangential. So they make "a few" (billion) on the side, it doesn't further their primary business.
Whereas Google or Facebook without ads would be... what?
In my experience, Amazon has _incredibly poor_ targeting. Search and place an order for cat food, and the next day you'll get an email with:
> Based on your recent activity, we thought you might be interested in this.
>
> ... cat food, the exact same brand I bought already ...
Not only that, their targeting doesn't seem to be based on my past purchases nor my frequent purchases, but almost solely based on what I have searched for recently.
They don't seem to use the _massive_ amount of data they have on my purchase history _at all_.