Amazon has more than doubled (up 132% year-on-year) quarterly advertising sales in the past year, breaking US$2 billion for the first time.
This is well behind ad sales booked at digital rivals Facebook (US$11.8 billion) and Google ($31.1 billion), but puts clear breathing space to Twitter, which reported quarterly ad sales of US$655 million this week.
Advertising sales has never been a major contributor for the e-commerce giant, which books the most revenue from its online marketplace (US$26,939) and makes the most profit margin from Amazon Web Services (US$1.4 billion on sales of US$5.4 billion).
However, it is gaining on Amazon Prime Video, which reported subscription sales US$3.1 billion. There has been strong growth in Amazon's search marketing sales, including headline search and sponsored products.
This partly reflects shifting consumer behaviour. In markets where Amazon dominates e-commerce, shoppers are increasingly turning to Amazon's marketplace to discover new products rather than search giant Google.
Amazon also plans to make it easy for marketers to manage programmatic campaigns themselves across its assets.
Analysts at Citi predict Amazon's annual advertising sales could exceed US$10 billion this year and top US$50 billion in the next decade.
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