Discussion

• @benedictevans Benedict Evans on x

  I wondered when Amazon would start disclosing advertising revenue. Answer: $31bn in 2021 - roughly the same size as the entire global newspaper industry. AWS produced $18.5bn operating income - it's plausible that the ad business is now more profitable. https://twitter.com/...

• @stacyfmitchell Stacy Mitchell on x

  3. Much of this growth in fees has been from “advertising.” Sellers used to rely on good ratings to land their products on the first page. Now they have to buy ads. In 2021, on top of $46 billion in referral fees, Amazon levied $17 billion in ad fees on sellers.

• @benyt Ben Smith on x

  Just a huge media story https://twitter.com/...

• @benedictevans Benedict Evans on x

  Wondering how long it will be before a newspaper's lawyers, probably in Australia, invent an argument that they are entitled to some of this money https://twitter.com/...

• @mattrosoff Matt Rosoff on x

  Google and Facebook are the number 1 and number 2 biggest advertising companies in the world, eclipsing all media companies. Until late last year, their stocks traded more or less in tandem. Then something changed. @levynews explai...https://www.linkedin.com/ ... https://www.cnbc…

• @markdistef Mark Di Stefano on x

  @theinformation So there's going to be a lot of pieces written about Amazon's ad business over the next few days because the company finally broke out how much it makes (a lot!). Here's in-depth profile with @sizpatel about the man who built it. https://www.theinformation.com/ ..…

• @tanyadua Tanya Dua on x

  Amazon's US ad business will grow 30% this year to reach $31.81 billion. That gives Amazon a 13.3% share of the US digital ad market, per @eMarketer

• @edmundlee Edmund Lee on x

  Amazon used to stick is ad business figures in its “other” line item but it looks like it finally broke it out? Q4 ad sales — arguably a coop fee/tax on 3rd party merchants who sell on Amazon — accounted for a third of all revenue. And by itself ads is a $30B/yr business $amzn ht…

• @chuck_gopal Deepak Gopalakrishnan on x

  Insane. Amazon makes 31b through advertising. The genius of which is, all of it leads to their products, on which there is further commission. What a business. https://twitter.com/...

• @sarthakgh @sarthakgh on x

  That's as large as Youtube's ad revenue https://twitter.com/...

• @pkafka Peter Kafka on x

  This is true. https://twitter.com/...

• @stacyfmitchell Stacy Mitchell on x

  4. These fees are monopoly rents. And they are a direct product of bad antitrust policy. The way to side-step the “consumer welfare” standard that warped antitrust beginning in the 1980s is to raise prices on someone other than consumers.

• @daveleeft Dave Lee on x

  Amazon generated more revenue from advertising last year than the entire global newspaper business. https://twitter.com/...

• @acouplecents Justin Oh on x

  The people doubting my insistence on $AMZN being a top compounder don't understand what a beast AWS is. https://www.google.com/...

• @shiraovide Shira Ovide on x

  Personal pet peeve: Amazon's advertising sales are better thought of as added revenue connected to its e-commerce operation. It is not a standalone ads business. https://www.bloomberg.com/...

• @matthewstoller Matt Stoller on x

  It's wrong to say that Amazon has an advertising business, it has an online retail business and it charges fees for getting your goods in front of customers. Those are slotting fees, not ads. https://www.wsj.com/...

• @pkafka Peter Kafka on x

  This is also true. https://twitter.com/...

• @mjasay Matt Asay on x

  Amazon's big quarter: Revenue of $137.4B, of which $17.8B came from AWS (which grew 40%). I guess this cloud thing is real? 😏 https://www.cnbc.com/...

• @craigsilverman Craig Silverman on x

  Amazon casually built one of the biggest ad businesses in the world in less than 5 years https://twitter.com/...

• @birdyword Mike Bird on x

  Makes me think that Bezos should buy a newspaper https://twitter.com/...

• @lpolgreen Lydia Polgreen on x

  One tech stock is not like the others today... https://twitter.com/...

• @stacyfmitchell Stacy Mitchell on x

  2. Amazon is a gatekeeper to the online market, and it makes money by imposing steep and growing fees on businesses that want and need to reach that market.

• @rakeshlobster Rakesh Agrawal on x

  $AMZN ad business is bigger than YouTube. Wow. Likely higher margin given lower cost. https://twitter.com/...

• @tomgara Tom Gara on x

  This enormous “advertising” number makes me wonder how much Walmart makes from deals with brands to get the best shelf space etc https://twitter.com/...

• @mjasay Matt Asay on x

  Apparently you can choose to start thousands of newspapers or just one advertising business on a retail site. Oh, and only one of those is going to be particularly profitable.... https://twitter.com/...

• @leticia Leticia Miranda on x

  Amazon's ad business has grown faster than AWS (excluding last qtr) ... remember the days when AWS was propping up their ecom biz?? https://twitter.com/...

• @matthewstoller Matt Stoller on x

  Amazon's ‘ads’ business is just forcing sellers to pay for digital shelf space. It's not advertising it's an abuse of market power. https://twitter.com/...

• @0xdabbad00 Scott Piper on x

  There are probably some AWS folks that have been proud they don't work at an ad company. Every tech company, if it gets big enough, ultimately becomes an ad company. https://twitter.com/...

• @carnage4life @carnage4life on x

  As expected Amazon's search ads business is on a tear. $9.7B per quarter is bigger than Twitter, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Bing & Pinterest combined. That's massive for a business that started after most of them. https://www.cnbc.com/...

• @arjunkharpal Arjun Kharpal on x

  Amazon's advertising arm has been seen as a bit of a side business. But it's huge. It brought in $9.7 billion in Q4 revenue alone. For comparison, here are Q4 revenue figures for the WHOLE of the following businesses: - Netflix: $7.71 billion - Snap: $1.3 billion $AMZN

• @eugenekim222 Eugene Kim on x

  Looks like Amazon is breaking out ad sales for the first time? $9.7B in Q4, up 32% YoY https://twitter.com/...

• @alexweprin Alex Weprin on x

  Amazon quietly disclosed just how much advertising revenue it brings in, saying it had $31 billion in ad revenue in 2021. That's more revenue than ViacomCBS had in total! https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/ ...