Amazon's Ad Revenue Up By 24% In Q1

Amazon has reported its financial results for the first quarter ending March 31, 2024. The company’s first-quarter revenue rose 13 per cent year-over-year (y/y) to $143.3 billion. 

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and advertising were key contributors to Amazon's Q1 performance. AWS generated a revenue of $25 billion. The company's ad revenue climbed 24 per cent to $11.8 billion in the first quarter from $9.5 billion a year earlier. It’s the first report since Amazon started running ads in Prime Video.

The growth in revenue was driven by growth in advertising and cloud computing, according to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy.

The company’s profit tripled to $ 10.4 billion, up from $3.2 billion during the same period last year.

Amazon's operating income saw a dramatic increase of over 200 per cent to $15.3 billion during Q1, outpacing revenue growth.

This significant leap is attributed to the company's effective cost-cutting strategies and focus on efficiency.

AWS accounted for 62 per cent of total operating profit, while net income more than tripled to $10.4 billion, or 98 cents a share, up from $3.17 billion or 31 cents a share a year ago.

“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,” says Andy Jassy.

“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,” he adds.