A recent search for men's   shoes turned up two paid ads for Amazon, including one for Zappos
A recent search for men’s shoes turned up two paid ads for Amazon, including one for Zappos

Amazon.com is competing with Google in a number of arenas, from phones to cloud services to drones. But this could be a classic example of “co-opetition.”

An analysis released today by AdAge finds that Amazon.com was the biggest spender on Google search ads in the U.S. last year, spending a whopping $157.7 million. Interestingly, three other Seattle area companies were in the top five, including Expedia (#4 with $71.6 million) and Microsoft (#5 with $67.1 million). Priceline Group ranked second, spending $82.3 million, followed by AT&T which spent $81.9 million.

Bellevue-based Blucora, operator of InfoSpace and TaxAct, also made the top 25 with an annual Google search ad spend of $39.1 million. That was ahead of Target, Bank of America and General Motors.

Amazon’s spend included affiliated companies such as Diapers.com and Zappos.

Amazon.com also is making its own push into the online advertising business, potentially competing more aggressively with Google on its home turf. The company is expected to generate more than $1 billion in ad revenue this year, according to AdAge.

You can see the full list of companies here, with the ranking based on desktop search, so mobile search ads do not get counted.

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