Amazon Digital Ad Revenues: $2 Billion in Q1 2018?

Look out Goobook, here comes Amazon.

We’ve been talking for a while about the emergence of Amazon as an online advertising platform.  The numbers from Q1 2018 shows it’s no longer just talk.

In just the first quarter of the year, Amazon announced earnings of more than $2 billion in “other sales” during its earnings call this week. Brian Olsavsky, Amazon CFO, said the other category is mostly made up of advertising revenue.  “It’s now a multi-billion dollar program and growing,” he said.

The “other” category was up $560 million in Q1, but there was some accounting rule changes that fueled the number.  Olsavsky said that if you backed out the changes, the category still grew more than 70%.

The growth is astounding.  Less than a month ago, estimates were that Amazon’s digital ad revenue would be $2 billion for the entire year.  Here’s how eMarketer summed up the digital market for 2018, with Google and Facebook taking 48% of all new expenditures.

Olsavsky did say there may be opportunities down the road to add video advertising to Prime Video, but there are no current plans to do so.