Amazon reports Q3 revenue of $8.09B for its “other” segment, which mostly covers its ads business, up 50% YoY, and $8.15B for subscription services, up 24% YoY
Todd Spangler / Variety : See also Mediagazer
Context & Ripple Effects
Two years of quarterly filings frame this print: Amazon's ad-heavy "other" segment ran $3.6B in Q3 2019 and $5.4B in Q3 2020, so the $8.09B reported here means the business has more than doubled in two years — and crossed $8B in a single quarter for the first time in this coverage. The prior quarter, Q2 2021's $7.9B, showed the same trajectory with even hotter 83% growth.
The subscription line tells the counter-story: growth has cooled from 33% a year ago to 24%, and subscriptions ($8.15B) are now only barely ahead of ads ($8.09B). The eventual arc is visible in Amazon's Q4 2025 report, where ad growth had settled to 18% and subscription growth to 10% — this quarter sits at the peak of the curve.
First-order effects
- Amazon's ads business effectively ties subscriptions at ~$8.1B for the quarter, making advertising — not Prime fees — the faster-growing revenue engine at 50% YoY versus 24%.
- Advertisers buying Amazon's retail data are now funding a revenue stream that has grown every quarter in this coverage, from $4.22B in Q2 2020 to $8.09B here.
Second-order effects
- Prime's decelerating subscription growth raises the stakes on Prime Video as the retention hook — consistent with Amazon later streaming titles like Mutiny on Prime Video and pushing Alexa+ onto Fire TV to deepen the bundle.
- Rivals with first-party purchase data face a retail-media competitor whose quarterly ad revenue has doubled since 2019, forcing them to defend advertiser budgets with their own commerce-linked ad products.
Third-order effects
- The pattern across these filings — hypergrowth in 2020-21, then 18% ad growth by the 2025 report — points to retail media maturing from a breakout into a slower, scale-driven business where Amazon's ad line and subscription line converge and grow in lockstep.
- If ads keep closing the gap with subscriptions, Amazon's economics shift toward an advertising-funded commerce model, with Prime functioning less as a profit center and more as the audience base that makes the ad inventory valuable.
The trend: Amazon's retail-media ads business scaled from $3.6B to $8B+ per quarter between 2019 and 2021, then decelerated sharply — the arc of retail media maturing from hypergrowth into a slower, scale-driven pillar alongside subscriptions.