Amazon is gearing up a major challenge on Google’s home turf: online advertising. According to multiple reports, the Seattle-based online shopping powerhouse is in the early stages of rolling out a proprietary ad network. Called “Amazon Sponsored Links,” the network will compete directly with Google’s AdWords, Google’s core business that generates $50 billion in revenue for the Mountain View, Calif. company.

According to VentureBeat, Amazon – which acquired The Washington Post under the leadership of founder Jeff Bezos – will be able to differentiate its ad network from AdWords and Facebook ads because it can provide advertisers with data on online shoppers’s buying preferences.

Ad agencies will be enabled to buy ads across Amazon and its partner sites that put the ads in front of “target audience demographic of the product,” VentureBeat reports.

Amazon’s ad network would be integrated with data only it has access to, and as the pre-eminent online retailer, that means it’s ad network will offer an alternative to AdWords, “in which more than a million users bid on ad inventory on sites all over the web,” according to VentureBeat.

Until now, Google and other firms placed ads on Amazon – and that is poised to change with Amazon vertically expanding its business offerings. Amazon has a basic ad platform for placing ads on other sites, and its newest endeavor appears to be an expansion effort.

The “Amazon Sponsored Links” platform will launch “later this year,” its executives told current advertising partners, according to VentureBeat.

Online advertising will be the latest battleground for Amazon and Google, both of which compete in smartphone offerings, grocery delivery services and cloud storage.