Advertising revenue for Amazon has more than doubled year-on-year, according to the latest company reports. Ad income topped $10.1bn in 2018, up 117.2% from 2017's total of $4.7bn. Ads now account for 4.3% of Amazon's total earnings, up from 2.6% in 2017 and 2.2% in 2016.
Advertising has been Amazon's leading growth segment across the two years, far outpacing other sources of revenue in 2018. Its growth of 117.2% was significantly higher than Amazon Web Services (+47.0% to $25.7bn), subscription services (+45.7% to $14.2bn) and total revenue growth (+30.9% to $232.9bn).
Despite this rapid growth, marketers have split views...