In 2021, Amazon’s advertising revenue exceeded US$31 billion, a year-on-year increase of 55%!

According to foreign media reports, Amazon recently announced the scale of its advertising business . According to the retailer's fourth-quarter financial report, Amazon generated US$31.2 billion in revenue in 2021, a year-on-year increase of 55% , and its fourth -quarter sales also increased by 32%.

At that scale, it's larger than several other entities in the online advertising space, including cloud rival Microsoft , whose CEO Satya Nadella revealed last week that the company had more than $10 billion in advertising revenue in 2021. Snap's total revenue reached $4.12 billion in 2021, while Pinterest's figure was $2.58 billion.

Advertising is still small by Amazon standards, accounting for 7% of total revenue in the fourth quarter, according to the company’s earnings report. Advertising is understood to bring in twice as much revenue for Amazon as physical stores and is larger than the company’s subscription services, which include Prime memberships.

Amazon's finance chief said on a conference call: "I'm excited to continue innovating in areas like sponsored ads, streaming video and measurement . " He also said: "Of course, advertising only works if we make it useful to our customers. When we create a great customer experience, we create better outcomes for brands."

Amazon didn’t tell investors to expect information about the size of its advertising business, which places ads in product listings and search results and on the wake screen of Amazon Fire tablets.

That makes the news even more surprising than it was in 2015 when Amazon began reporting revenue and operating income for its Amazon Web Services cloud unit, which now accounts for about 13% of total revenue.

Amazon’s ad-services unit grew 33% in the fourth quarter on a currency-neutral basis, compared with a much higher 88% growth in the second quarter , which included Amazon’s Prime Day event , which offered consumers many discounts.

It is reported that Amazon's advertising revenue is now almost on par with Prime membership subscription revenue. In addition, third-party online market revenue remains Amazon's largest source of revenue, exceeding $100 billion for the first time in 2021 , surpassing Amazon AWS network service's $62 billion !

Amazon advertising revenue in 2021

55% YoY growth