Amazon is exploring ad options for Echo and Alexa

This story was delivered to BI Intelligence IoT Briefing subscribers hours before it appeared on Business Insider. To be the first to know, please click here. Amazon is looking to transform the Echo smart speaker and its Alexa voice assistant into an advertising platform, according to CNBC. The e-commerce giant has talked with a number of consumer products companies about the potential ads and the form that they would take. Opening up Alexa to advertising could create a major revenue opportunity for Amazon and skill-making partners, but could also pose a risk to the company as it looks to build on its early lead in the smart speaker market.