Accessing A User's History Using Js

I'm not looking for code/how to. Just knowledge. A client has just come to us with a question: Can we access the user's history from within a banner advert to give them some target

Solution 1:

No!

There's no browser (that I know of) that legitimately give you access to a user's browsing history.

There has been incidents where it was possible to do so by exploiting certain behaviors of the browser. Recently, in Firefox 16 there's a vulnerability that, if exploited properly, allows you to peek into the user's browsing history.

In the case you're describing (Amazon), yes, cookies are used. To be more accurate, Third-Party Cookies are used.

Update: I was very interested in your last edit (about history being completely open in the past), so I tried to go back a little.