Amazon's ad revenue increased by 24% in the first quarter of 2024

Amazon's advertising revenue increased by 24% in the first quarter, reaching $11.8 billion compared to $9.5 billion last year. This growth exceeded analysts' expectations, who predicted $11.7 billion. Net sales increased 13% to $143.3 billion in the first quarter, compared with $127.4 billion in the first quarter of 2023.

Although online retail and cloud computing are still Amazon's main sources of revenue, the company sees advertising as a key area for further growth and profit, especially as other areas of expansion slow down.

It appears to be fueled by the e-commerce giant’s move to serve ads by default in Prime Video in multiple markets.

In his annual letter to Amazon shareholders this month, Amazon CEO, Andy Jassy, announced that Prime Video has more than 200 million monthly viewers and touted the service’s addition of advertising starting January 29. In the U.S. alone, the company has told marketers that Prime Video reached an estimated 115 million monthly viewers. To date, Prime Video ads have launched in the United States, the U.K., Germany, Austria, Canada, France, Italy, Spain and Mexico.

In the first quarter, Amazon spent $4.6 billion on video and music content, which was higher than the $4.0 billion spent in the same period last year.

It was a good start to the year across the business, and you can see that in both our customer experience improvements and financial results,” said Andy Jassy, Amazon President and CEO. “The combination of companies renewing their infrastructure modernization efforts and the appeal of AWS’s AI capabilities is reaccelerating AWS’s growth rate (now at a $100 billion annual revenue run rate); our Stores business continues to expand selection, provide everyday low prices, and accelerate delivery speed (setting another record on speed for Prime customers in Q1) while lowering our cost to serve; and, our Advertising efforts continue to benefit from the growth of our Stores and Prime Video businesses. It’s very early days in all of our businesses and we remain excited by how much more we can make customers’ lives better and easier moving forward.”