Amazon’s third-quarter earnings release, filed with the SEC on 29 October 2026, shows $19.6 billion of advertising services revenue in the quarter to 30 September, up 11% from $17.7 billion a year earlier.
By our arithmetic, that is about 31% of the $63.35 billion Alphabet reported for Google Search & other in the same quarter. The release also shows ad growth excluding currency moves slowing to 12%, from 26% in the second quarter.
Short explainer · Amazon ads
A vertical news Short narrated from the published headlines and opening lines of this piece and three related FourWeekMBA pieces on Meta, Google Search and Shopify.
Business Pill · Agentic Commerce
An evergreen Business Engineer explainer on agentic commerce: what changes when the shopper is an AI agent. It explains the general idea only and does not discuss Amazon or this quarter.
The key insight: By our arithmetic, Amazon’s $19.6 billion of third-quarter advertising revenue was about 31% of Google Search & other, while its growth excluding currency moves slowed to 12% from 26%, a slowdown Amazon ties to Prime Day timing.
Advertising services revenue was $19,637 million in the third quarter, against $17,703 million a year earlier and $19,809 million in the second quarter. By our arithmetic, that is about $172 million less than the second quarter, a dip of about 0.9%.
The supplemental table puts year-on-year growth excluding currency moves at 22% in each of the four quarters from the second quarter of 2025 to the first quarter of 2026, 26% in the second quarter of 2026 and 12% in the third.
Amazon gives a reason in the guidance section of the release: “Advertising revenue grew 12% year-over-year excluding changes in foreign exchange rates in the third quarter 2026 impacted by timing anomalies primarily related to Prime Day (and a couple other timing factors)”.
The release adds: “We expect year-over-year advertising revenue to grow in the high teens in fourth quarter 2026”.
Amazon advertising services revenue, year-on-year growth excluding changes in foreign exchange rates, by quarter from the second quarter of 2025 to the third quarter of 2026. Source: Amazon Q3 2026 earnings release (SEC 8-K Exhibit 99.1, 29 October 2026), supplemental table.
Key Updates: ๐น Anthropic: $9.5B pre-tax gain in Q3โ25 included in non-operating income ๐น AWS: $184B annualized revenue run rate; over 39% YoY growth ๐น AgentCore: Tens of thousands of customers; 2x more agents deployed in Q3 ๐น Alexa for Shopping: 400M+ customers; interactions up 570% YoY
Comments: ๐ธ โOur AWS investment in functionality and infrastructure is working, with over 39% year-over-year revenuegrowth in Q3 ($184 billion revenue run rate) and projected revenuegrowth rates of over 40% both in 2027 and in 2028โ
Wall St Engine on X, 29 Oct: Amazon Q3 advertising $19.6B against an estimate of $20.87B, and subscription $14.0B against an estimate of $13.69B; Alexa for Shopping “400M+ customers; interactions up 570% YoY”.
The Agentic Layer Amazon Listed
Among the quarter’s highlights, the release says Amazon introduced Amazon Ads Agent, “bringing together Amazon’s full offering under a single, AI-first platform”, and launched Full-Funnel Campaigns in it for all US advertisers. It describes how those campaigns work: “Advertisers provide initial inputs, then Amazon’s AI plans, executes, and continuously optimizes the rest”.
On the shopping side, the release says Alexa for Shopping, Amazon’s agentic shopping assistant, was “used by 400 million+ customers in the last 12 months, with customer interactions up 570% year-over-year”, and that Amazon added more than 100 new capabilities to it.
For sellers, the release lists “a plugin that integrates Seller Assistant into Amazon Quick and Anthropic’s Claude”.
Amazon, Google and Meta Side by Side
Our piece on Meta and Google Search covered Meta’s third-quarter advertising revenue of $63.06 billion, up 25.9%, and Alphabet’s Google Search & other revenue of $63.35 billion, up 12.0%. By our arithmetic, Amazon’s $19.6 billion of advertising services revenue is about 31.0% of the Search line and about 31.1% of Meta’s advertising revenue.
On reported figures, by our arithmetic, Amazon’s advertising grew about 10.9%, against 12.0% for Google Search & other and 25.9% for Meta. Our paid-clicks piece covered Google’s paid clicks slowing to 8% growth, and our analysis of Google’s drop covered how the market read that slowdown.
Related coverage: our Shopify piece covered Shop Pay at non-Shopify stores, and our Grok piece covered Shop Pay and buy-now product cards inside xAI’s Grok Bot.
The Structural Read
By our arithmetic, third-quarter advertising revenue was about $172 million below the second quarter’s $19.8 billion.
As we read the release, Amazon ties the third-quarter slowdown to timing anomalies primarily related to Prime Day and guides to high-teens growth in the fourth quarter.
As we read the release, the advertising and shopping launches it lists are agents that act for advertisers, shoppers and sellers.
Amazon Q3 2026 earnings release, 29 October 2026
“Advertisers provide initial inputs, then Amazon’s AI plans, executes, and continuously optimizes the rest”
Three Implications
FOR ADVERTISERS The release says Full-Funnel Campaigns in Amazon Ads Agent bring sponsored ads, display, video and streaming TV into a single campaign.
FOR INVESTORS The release says Amazon expects year-over-year advertising revenue to grow in the high teens in the fourth quarter of 2026.
FOR RIVALS By our arithmetic, Amazon’s advertising revenue was about 31% of both Google Search & other and Meta’s advertising revenue in the quarter.
The framework puts it in one line: “Your product stops being the thing companies buy and becomes the thing other systems assume exists.”
As we read it, an ads agent that plans and runs campaigns, and a Seller Assistant plugin inside another company’s AI, fit the embedding side of that line. The framework was published in December 2025 and does not discuss Amazon’s quarter.
What Is Not Established
The release does not split advertising revenue by format, such as sponsored products against Prime Video ads, and does not put a dollar figure on the Prime Day timing effect. It gives no revenue or advertising figure for Alexa for Shopping or Ads Agent. Amazon’s 10-Q had not been read for this piece. Shares, differences and reported growth rates are our arithmetic from the release’s tables.
This Week In The AI Supercycle
Execution Fault Lines, Concentrated Demand, and Geopolitical Firewalls
This week’s issue: the AI build is not short of demand for its parts. It is short of cheap money, and its end revenue rests on a narrow base of large, often venture-funded buyers.
Amazon’s release shows $19.6 billion of third-quarter advertising revenue, about 31% of Google Search & other by our arithmetic, with growth excluding currency moves at 12% after 26% in the second quarter, and Amazon guiding to growth in the high teens in the fourth quarter.
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A note on sourcing. Every Amazon figure comes from its third-quarter 2026 earnings release, filed with the SEC on 29 October 2026 as Exhibit 99.1 to a Form 8-K. Alphabet and Meta figures come from our earlier coverage of their releases. Shares, differences and reported growth rates are our arithmetic. Amazon’s 10-Q had not been read for this piece.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
