Amazon posted uneven Q4 financial results, but advertising remained a bright spot for the e-commerce giant. Revenue derived from ad sales rose 22% year over year to $21.3 billion for the quarter that includes the critical holiday shopping window, according to an earnings statement.
Those advertising figures mark an acceleration in the rate of growth from the year-ago period. Amazon across 2025 saw ad revenue surpass $68 billion. Q4 2025 revenue came in at $213.4 billion, up 14% YoY and above analyst targets, but Amazon missed expectations on earnings per share.
Amazon’s ads business is still largely fueled by sponsored products listings on its e-commerce marketplace, but Prime Video contributed “meaningfully” to the segment in Q4, according to CEO Andy Jassy. The streamer, which started running commercials two years ago, is part of Amazon’s bid to offer full-funnel advertising that extends beyond its roots in retail media. The company in 2025 added over $12 billion in incremental revenue from its full-funnel strategy, CFO Brian Olsavsky said on a call discussing the results with analysts.
Prime Video’s ad-supported audience totaled 315 million viewers in Q4 while “Thursday Night Football,” one of the service’s marquee pieces of live programming, had its most-watched season yet. The weekly NFL broadcast averaged more than 15 million viewers, up 16% YoY and marking the third consecutive year of double-digit audience growth as more sports audiences and advertisers shift to streaming.
Amazon has also built out its range of tools for advertisers, including through new generative artificial intelligence features. The company in September launched an AI assistant that is designed to handle major aspects of campaign development, from early research to creating complex assets like video ads.
“Our creative agent lets advertisers research, brainstorm and generate full-funnel ad campaigns from concept to completion using conversational guidance in Amazon’s retail data, transforming what was a week-long process into just hours,” said Jassy on the call.
Setting those innovations aside, Amazon joined a fleet of tech companies facing sharper investor scrutiny over soaring AI spend. Amazon said capital expenditures are expected to hit a whopping $200 billion in 2026, above digital titans like Google and Meta. Amazon shares traded sharply lower following the earnings report, capping off a week where Big Tech firms have seen about $1 trillion in lost market value over rising concerns tied to AI spending, per FactSet data cited in CNBC.
