Amazon's advertising revenue grew 11% to $19.64 billion in the third quarter of 2026, the company reported today, less than half the 26% rate it posted three months earlier and below the 22% it had recorded, excluding currency effects, in each of the four quarters to March. Amazon attributed the slowdown to "timing anomalies primarily related to Prime Day (and a couple other timing factors)," after the Prime Day sales event moved into the second quarter for most large countries. The rest of the business did not slow in the same way. AWS sales rose 39.3% to $45.98 billion, the cloud unit's fastest growth in nearly five years, and operating income reached $28.1 billion, a 13.9% margin that Amazon described as its highest ever. For the fourth quarter, Amazon told investors to expect advertising growth "in the high teens."

In Short

Amazon made $19.6 billion selling ads between July and September, 11% more than a year earlier, but that is far slower than in the spring, mostly because Prime Day happened in June this year instead of July. The number matters to anyone who buys ads on Amazon, because it shows how much brands and sellers spend to be seen there, and it slowed in a quarter when Amazon's cloud business grew at its fastest rate in nearly five years and its profit margin hit a record. Amazon says ad growth will climb back into the high teens in the last three months of 2026, which would still be slower than the 22% pace of a year ago.

Advertising, quarter by quarter

Amazon published results for the quarter ended September 30, 2026, today and scheduled a conference call for 2:00 p.m. Pacific time. Advertising services revenue was $19,637 million, up from $17,703 million a year earlier. That is growth of 10.9% as reported, or 12% on a constant currency basis, which removes the effect of exchange-rate movements.

Amazon defines the line as sales of advertising services "to sellers, vendors, publishers, authors, and others, through programs such as sponsored ads, display, and video advertising." It does not split the total between sponsored ads on its own store, programmatic display sold across other sites and apps, and the streaming inventory on Prime Video. The table below uses Amazon's own supplemental figures for the six quarters it discloses.

Quarter Advertising services revenue Year-over-year growth, excluding currency effects
Q2 2025 $15.69bn 22%
Q3 2025 $17.70bn 22%
Q4 2025 $21.32bn 22%
Q1 2026 $17.24bn 22%
Q2 2026 $19.81bn 26%
Q3 2026 $19.64bn 12%

Unlike a year earlier, revenue fell from the second quarter to the third, by $172 million or 0.9%. A year earlier, the same step added $2,009 million, or 12.8%, PPC Land's calculation. Set against the prior year, the third quarter added $1.93 billion of advertising revenue, compared with $4.12 billion in the second.

PPC Land's earlier reports trace the run-up. Amazon's ad revenue reached $17.7 billion in the third quarter of 2025, $21.3 billion in the fourth quarter, and $17.2 billion in the first quarter of 2026, when the trailing twelve-month total passed $70 billion. Then, on July 30, Amazon reported a 26% rise to $19.8 billion for the second quarter.

After today's figure, the trailing twelve-month total stands at $78.0 billion and the nine-month total for 2026 at $56.69 billion. Advertising accounted for 9.7% of Amazon's net sales in the quarter, against 9.8% a year earlier, and was equivalent to 42.7% of AWS revenue.

Taking the Prime Day effect out

According to Amazon, "Prime Day timing shifted this year, with the event occurring in Q2 for most large countries. In 2025, Prime Day occurred entirely in Q3." Excluding the shift, Amazon said third-quarter net sales growth would have been about 400 basis points higher. It gave no comparable adjustment for advertising.

The move was not a surprise. In February, a June date was already being discussed as a shift of promotional revenue from the third quarter into the second. Amazon's first-quarter guidance in April assumed Prime Day would fall in the second quarter, and by May the event had been confirmed for June across 26 countries. When Amazon reported its second quarter, chief financial officer Brian Olsavsky said the event fell in that quarter for most large countries, with the US edition running from June 23 to 26.

The simplest way to remove the distortion is to add the two quarters together. Advertising revenue for the second and third quarters of 2026 combined was $39.45 billion, against $33.40 billion for the same six months of 2025, an increase of 18.1%, PPC Land's calculation. On the same basis, total net sales rose 15.7%, online stores 7.8%, third-party seller services 12.6% and subscription services 11.9%.

Those two-quarter rates are on a reported basis, because Amazon does not publish currency-neutral figures for combined periods. Currency does not close the gap, though. In the third quarter, exchange rates cut reported ad growth by about one point, from 12% to 10.9%, and in the second they made little difference. With Prime Day counted in both years, Amazon's advertising grew at around 18% over the six months to September, faster than its retail sales but slower than the 22% currency-neutral pace of the four quarters to March.

"A couple other timing factors"

Amazon did not say what the other timing factors were, or how much of the slowdown each one explains. The explanation sits in the guidance section of the release, next to the fourth-quarter forecast, rather than in the summary of results. Without a breakdown, the documents do not show how much of the fall from 26% to 12% belongs to Prime Day and how much to anything else.

The statement attributed to chief executive Andy Jassy does not mention advertising at all. It covers AWS, retail market share, Grocery, Pharmacy, Amazon Leo and Zoox.

The fourth-quarter test

"We expect year-over-year advertising revenue to grow in the high teens in fourth quarter 2026," Amazon said. Applied to the $21,317 million of the fourth quarter of 2025, growth of 17% to 19% would produce advertising revenue of about $24.9 billion to $25.4 billion, PPC Land's calculation. Amazon gave no dollar figure and did not define "high teens," nor did it say whether the forecast excludes currency effects.

If Amazon lands in that range, its 2026 advertising revenue would reach roughly $81.6 billion to $82.1 billion. Full-year 2025 advertising revenue was $68.6 billion, so the annual increase would be around 19% to 20%, again PPC Land's arithmetic.

The comparison that matters most for buyers is the rate itself. The fourth quarter of 2025 grew 22% excluding currency effects, and the release cites no timing distortion for the fourth quarter of 2026. Prime Big Deal Days ran on October 6 and 7 across 22 countries, inside the quarter. A high-teens forecast for a quarter Amazon does not describe as distorted, alongside the 18% figure for April to September, points to an advertising business now growing a few points more slowly than it did a year ago.

Before the numbers

At least one preview expected the opposite on advertising. Jeremy Bowman, a contributing retail and tech analyst at The Motley Fool, wrote in a preview that Amazon "is also facing a headwind as it shifted Prime Day to Q2 this year, and advertising, which is included in e-commerce, is well-positioned for another strong quarter after delivering 26% growth in Q2."

On cloud, Bowman expected acceleration. "We're likely to see another strong quarter from AWS in Q3, and there's a good chance it will exceed the Q2 growth rate," he wrote. On total sales, he said he would "expect its growth rate to be around 10%, given its guidance of 9%-12% revenue growth in Q3."

The results split along those lines. AWS growth rose to 39% from 37%. Net sales grew 12% to $201.94 billion, just $56 million below the top of the $197.0 billion to $202.0 billion range Amazon set in July. Advertising did not produce another quarter like the second.

Bowman also framed the spending question. Amazon, he wrote, "has the highest forecasted capex spending of the hyperscalers, of up to $220 billion this year as of the Q2 report." That figure did not move today.

Ads Agent and Full-Funnel Campaigns

The release lists two advertising products among its highlights. Amazon "introduced Amazon Ads Agent for advertisers, bringing together Amazon's full offering under a single, AI-first platform," it said. "Backed by trillions of shopping, browsing, and streaming signals, Amazon Ads Agent supports advertisers at every step with insights, answers, and the ability to take action on their behalf."

The second is Full-Funnel Campaigns, launched inside Ads Agent "for all U.S. advertisers, bringing sponsored ads, display, video, and streaming TV into a single campaign." Amazon described the division of labour plainly: "Advertisers provide initial inputs, then Amazon's AI plans, executes, and continuously optimizes the rest."

Neither product is new to readers of PPC Land. Ads Agent first appeared on November 11, 2025, at unBoxed in Nashville, as an assistant that built campaign structures from uploaded media plans and wrote Amazon Marketing Cloud queries, with campaigns launching only after an advertiser approved them. At unBoxed 2026 in San Francisco on September 29, Amazon turned Ads Agent into the front door for its whole advertising platform, and the buying product formerly known as Amazon DSP became DVA. Full-Funnel Campaigns carry a minimum daily budget of $100, with Amazon allocating the money across formats.

In July, Jassy told analysts that advertisers using Ads Agent targeting saw 8% lower cost per impression and 6% lower cost per acquisition, and that the tool had expanded to 11 new countries during the year. Today's release repeats none of those figures and adds none of its own. There is no count of advertisers using Ads Agent, no share of spend running through Full-Funnel Campaigns and no performance data. "Trillions" of signals is the only quantity offered.

The products arrive while Amazon defends a federal case over how it prices sponsored ads. The FTC and 22 states filed a 181-page complaint on August 31, 2026, in the US District Court for the Western District of Washington, alleging that an undisclosed reserve mechanism meant advertisers paid their full bid on 79.1% of charged clicks in 2024, despite Amazon telling them winners paid a penny more than the runner-up. Amazon says no one was overcharged. The release's list of risks refers only to "the outcomes of claims, litigation, government investigations, and other proceedings," and the guidance assumes no legal settlements are concluded.

Prime Video's sports slate

Amazon's streaming inventory gets more space in the release than its ad business does. The fifth season of Thursday Night Football on Prime Video averaged 17.7 million viewers through six games, according to Nielsen, which Amazon called "its best start ever and a 16% increase over last year's full-season average." The previous season averaged more than 15 million viewers, according to Amazon's fourth-quarter 2025 disclosures.

The second season of NBA on Prime launched in more than 200 countries and drew more than two million US viewers for its season-opening doubleheader, "more than doubling last year's full-season average, according to Nielsen." That doubleheader was played on October 23, with the Knicks at the Celtics and the Rockets at the Spurs, which places it, and most of the football season, in the fourth quarter. The audience gains Amazon highlights today will show up, if at all, in the quarter it expects to deliver high-teens ad growth.

Season Four of Reacher drew 66 million viewers globally in its first 28 days, according to Amazon, and Amazon MGM Studios passed $1.2 billion in global box office in 2026 with films including Project Hail Mary and Verity.

Demand for the sports inventory was already high before the new season. In July, Jassy said inventory on Thursday Night Football, the NBA, the WNBA and NASCAR had sold out. In May, Alan Moss, Amazon's vice president of global advertising sales, said the NFL partnership had brought 80 net new advertisers and the first NBA year 30. Amazon's fourth-quarter 2025 disclosures put the average ad-supported audience at 315 million viewers globally. Today's release gives neither an updated audience figure nor a revenue number for Prime Video ads, so buyers of CTV inventory have viewing data without any matching commercial figure.

Amazon also widened the surfaces on which it can place ads and recommendations. It launched 34 new devices across Echo, Kindle, Amazon Alexa Tablets, Fire TV, Ring, Blink and Bee, took Alexa+ to Australia, India and Japan, and made Alexa+ free to US customers with compatible Fire TV devices. Alexa for Shopping, which Amazon calls its "agentic shopping assistant," was used by more than 400 million customers in the past 12 months, with customer interactions up 570%, according to the company.

That growth in Amazon's own shopping agent contrasts with its stance on agents built by others. Amazon is in court trying to keep Perplexity's Comet browser assistant off its store, a case PPC Land has argued could shape access to Amazon's ad inventory.

Retail: online stores grow 2%

Amazon's retail lines show the Prime Day effect more sharply than advertising does. Online stores revenue grew 2% to $68,470 million, both as reported and excluding currency effects, after 15% in the second quarter. Physical stores grew 2% to $5,710 million. Third-party seller services, which include commissions and fulfillment and shipping fees, rose 9% to $46,492 million, or 10% excluding currency.

Subscription services, which include Prime membership fees, grew 11% to $14,006 million, or 12% excluding currency, a rate that has held between 10% and 12% for six quarters. The "other" line, which includes shipping services, healthcare services and co-branded credit cards, rose 16% to $1,645 million.

By segment, North America sales rose 6% to $112.85 billion and International sales 5% to $43.11 billion, or 8% excluding currency. Paid units grew 12%, and third-party sellers accounted for 61% of them, unchanged from the second quarter. Worldwide shipping costs rose 11% to $28.30 billion.

The release's operational claims centre on speed and groceries. Amazon said it delivered more than 1.5 billion items same-day or overnight to Prime members in the quarter. Amazon Now, its ultra-fast delivery service, is available in more than 450 towns and cities, with items ordered through it up tenfold. Fresh groceries and everyday essentials are growing about three times faster than the rest of the store, according to Amazon, and represented about half of all units sold in the quarter. Amazon Pharmacy offers three-hour prescription delivery in more than 350 cities.

For sellers, Amazon listed Seller Assistant workflows that handle restocking and pricing, a plugin connecting Seller Assistant to Amazon Quick and Anthropic's Claude, and tools to manage listings, orders and profitability across multiple sales channels from Seller Central. Selection from brands including Banana Republic, La-Z-Boy and FAO Schwarz grew by more than 20%, it said.

AWS: 39% and a $184 billion run rate

AWS sales were $45,984 million, up 39.3% from $33,006 million, which Amazon described as the unit's fastest growth in nearly five years. Multiplied by four, the quarter gives the "$184 billion annualized revenue run rate" in the release's headline. Growth excluding currency has risen every quarter in Amazon's table: 17%, 20%, 24%, 28%, 37% and now 39%.

Operating income at AWS rose 55% to $17,773 million. Its operating margin was 38.7%, up from 34.6% a year earlier but slightly below the 39.4% of the second quarter. Sequentially, AWS added $3.75 billion of revenue, compared with $2.13 billion in the same period of 2025.

"Our AWS investment in functionality and infrastructure is working, with over 39% year-over-year revenue growth in Q3 ($184 billion revenue run rate) and projected revenue growth rates of over 40% both in 2027 and in 2028," Jassy said. He added: "There has never been a trillion dollar revenue business, and we may have two of them in the next 5-10 years." The release does not say how the 2027 and 2028 projections were derived.

The release puts AI at the centre of the AWS story. Amazon Bedrock, which Amazon describes as AWS's inference service, saw Fortune 500 companies spend nearly seven times more than a year earlier, while total Bedrock token volume grew nearly seventeenfold. New models on Bedrock include OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra, GPT-6 Sol, GPT-6 Luna and GPT-6.1 Sol, Anthropic's Claude Fable 5.1, Opus 5.5, Sonnet 5.5 and Haiku 5.5, Moonshot AI's Kimi K3, SpaceXAI's Grok 4.7 and Z.ai's GLM 5.3. AWS also launched built-in web search for OpenAI models on Bedrock and a public preview of Bedrock Managed Agents, a managed service that Amazon says is "powered by OpenAI."

On agents more broadly, Amazon said tens of thousands of customers use Bedrock AgentCore and that they deployed twice as many agents in the third quarter as in the three prior quarters combined. Its open source Strands harness, according to Amazon, "lowers the cost of agent tasks by 32% through greater token efficiency than other harnesses." Lambda, the serverless computing service, recently passed a $1 billion annualized revenue run rate. AWS also acquired DuckLabs, the company behind the DuckDB data analysis tool, and released TorchNeuron so that PyTorch code runs on its Trainium chips without rewriting.

New AWS agreements named in the release include Meta, NVIDIA, OpenAI, Salesforce, Oracle, Qualcomm, Verizon, Stripe and NATO. For context, Microsoft reported Azure growth of 48% for the same three months.

A record margin, and the base behind it

Consolidated operating income rose 61% to $28,076 million from $17,422 million. The operating margin of 13.9% compares with 9.7% a year earlier and 13.7% in the second quarter, and the trailing twelve-month margin reached 13.1%.

Part of the jump comes from the comparison quarter. "Other operating expense (income), net" was $134 million, against $2,875 million in the third quarter of 2025. Excluding that line from both years, operating income rose about 39%, from $20.3 billion to $28.2 billion, PPC Land's calculation. The release does not explain what the 2025 charge was.

AWS produced 63.3% of the company's operating income, down from 65.6% a year earlier, because the retail segments improved faster. North America earned $8,723 million, a margin of 7.7% against 4.5%, and International $1,580 million, a margin of 3.7% against 2.9%. Combined, the two retail segments earned $10.3 billion, 72% more than a year earlier.

The cost lines show where money went. Technology and infrastructure expense rose 20% to $34,814 million, and depreciation and amortization 25% to $20,949 million. Fulfillment grew 8% and cost of sales 7%, both slower than revenue. Sales and marketing expense was $11,649 million, slightly below the $11,686 million of a year earlier, even as revenue grew 12%. Net service sales made up 62.7% of the total, against 58.9% a year earlier.

Amazon employed 1,638,000 full-time and part-time staff at the end of September, 43,000 more than at the end of June and 4% more than a year earlier, excluding contractors and temporary workers.

Net income, Anthropic and the cash bill

Net income fell to $20,685 million, or $1.89 per diluted share, from $21,187 million, or $1.95. According to Amazon, the decline is "driven primarily by pre-tax gains of $9.5 billion in third quarter 2025 included in non-operating income (expense) from our investments in Anthropic." This year, other income and expense swung to a loss of $703 million in the quarter, and interest expense more than tripled to $1,691 million from $538 million.

Anthropic still dominates the year. Over nine months, other income totalled $68.36 billion, which helped lift net income to $113.59 billion. Amazon booked a $16.8 billion non-cash gain on Anthropic in the first quarter and $53.4 billion of other income in the second, primarily from Anthropic, and Anthropic's IPO filing shows minimum compute commitments to Amazon of at least $110.0 billion through April 2036. In the third quarter, Amazon's comprehensive income of $56.68 billion included $35.97 billion of after-tax unrealized gains on available-for-sale debt securities. The release does not identify those securities.

Cash is where the AI build-out shows. Purchases of property and equipment were $77,259 million in the quarter, up 120% from $35,095 million. Net of proceeds and incentives, they reached $210.66 billion over twelve months, up 82%, which Amazon said "primarily reflects investments in artificial intelligence." Operating cash flow rose 29% to $168.3 billion over the same period, yet free cash flow turned to an outflow of $42.36 billion, against an inflow of $14.79 billion a year earlier.

The quarter alone was heavier than the first half. Third-quarter operating cash flow of $42.42 billion, less $75.88 billion of net capital purchases, leaves an outflow of $33.46 billion, compared with $24.89 billion for the first six months combined, PPC Land's calculation from the cash flow statement.

Amazon said it continues "to expect 2026 cash capital expenditures to be approximately $220 billion." Net purchases of property and equipment totalled $172.19 billion over the first nine months. If the $220 billion is measured the same way, the guidance leaves about $47.8 billion for the fourth quarter, down from $75.9 billion in the third, PPC Land's arithmetic. The release does not reconcile the two measures, and the cash flow statement also shows $21.47 billion of property and equipment acquired but not yet paid for during the nine months.

Other investing outflows also rose. The line for acquisitions, non-marketable investments and other items consumed $23.99 billion in the quarter and $63.75 billion over nine months, against $2.44 billion in the first nine months of 2025. The release names one acquisition, DuckLabs, and does not break the figure down.

The spending was funded partly with debt. Long-term debt rose to $173.13 billion at September 30 from $65.65 billion at the end of 2025, with $48.10 billion of new long-term borrowing in the third quarter and $115.10 billion over nine months. Cash and cash equivalents fell to $55.78 billion from $86.81 billion. Total assets reached $1.243 trillion, up from $818.0 billion nine months earlier.

In its note on non-GAAP measures, Amazon said that "our financial focus is on long-term, sustainable growth in free cash flow," while warning that the measure "does not represent the residual cash flow available for discretionary expenditures."

Fourth-quarter guidance

Amazon expects fourth-quarter net sales of $240.0 billion to $247.0 billion, growth of 12% to 16%, including an unfavourable currency effect of about 60 basis points. Operating income is expected at $28.5 billion to $33.5 billion, against $25.0 billion a year earlier, an increase of 14% to 34%. Advertising revenue is forecast to grow in the high teens, and 2026 cash capital expenditure is still expected at about $220 billion.

The guidance assumes no impact from "energy derivative contract remeasurements" and no further acquisitions, restructurings or legal settlements. Among the factors Amazon said could affect results are energy prices, tariff and trade policies, and "resource and supply volatility, including for memory chips."

The holiday quarter comes with higher labour costs. Amazon repeated its plan to hire more than 300,000 seasonal, part-time and full-time employees in US operations, up from 250,000 in 2025, and its investment of more than $1.5 billion to raise minimum starting pay for full-time US operations staff to $20 an hour. It also introduced Built Together, a $1 billion community investment programme for US data center communities.

Elsewhere, Amazon said its Amazon Leo low Earth orbit satellite service remains on track to begin initial service later this year, with AT&T signed as the first major US telecom provider to offer Leo connectivity to enterprise and public-sector customers. Zoox began paid robotaxi rides in Las Vegas, started testing in San Diego and Houston, and now operates in 12 US cities.

How Amazon's ad growth compares

The third-quarter reporting season gives a direct comparison across the largest ad sellers. Each company reports a differently defined line, so the table compares what each discloses for the quarter to September 30, 2026.

Company Ad revenue line Q3 2026 revenue Year-over-year growth
Meta Advertising $63.06bn 26%
Google Search & other $63.35bn 12%
Amazon Advertising services $19.64bn 11% (12% excluding currency)
YouTube Ads $11.21bn 9%
Microsoft Search and advertising, including LinkedIn $6.55bn 10%

Meta's advertising revenue grew 26% when it reported on October 21. On October 28, Google's Search revenue growth fell to 12% from 17% in the second quarter, and YouTube's ad revenue rose 9% to $11.2 billion, its slowest growth of the year. Microsoft's search and advertising revenue, now including LinkedIn, rose 10% to $6.55 billion in the same three months.

On the reported figures, Amazon now sits with Google Search and Microsoft rather than with Meta. Its roughly 18% growth over the six months to September, the view that smooths out Prime Day, would sit above the single-quarter rates of 9% to 12% at Google Search, YouTube and Microsoft, though the periods differ, and still well behind Meta.

Why this matters for the marketing community

Amazon's advertising line is a central benchmark for the retail media network category, and for five straight quarters to June it grew at 22% or more excluding currency. Amazon attributes today's 11% mainly to the calendar, and it had flagged the Prime Day move months ahead. What the calendar does not explain is the forecast. A high-teens rate for a fourth quarter that Amazon does not describe as distorted, combined with the 18% figure for the six months to September, suggests that the underlying pace has stepped down from the low twenties to the high teens.

That matters for brands and agencies planning 2027 budgets. Is the step down a pause, or a new trend line for Amazon's ad business? In the second quarter, Amazon added $4.12 billion of advertising revenue on the prior year; in the third, $1.93 billion. The release does not say whether the slowdown reflects fewer impressions sold, lower prices or the calendar alone, and Amazon does not break advertising down by format, so the documents cannot show whether sponsored ads, programmatic display or Prime Video's streaming inventory slowed most.

The direction of Amazon's product strategy is clearer than its numbers. The two advertising highlights in the release are both about handing more of the work to Amazon's AI: Ads Agent taking "action on their behalf," and Full-Funnel Campaigns in which Amazon "plans, executes, and continuously optimizes the rest." Advertisers are being asked to route more budget through systems that decide allocation across sponsored ads, display, video and streaming TV, at a time when the FTC and 22 states are challenging how Amazon's sponsored ads auction set prices. The release offers no data on how those automated campaigns perform.

For sellers, the picture is mixed. Third-party seller services grew faster than Amazon's own online store sales, and the company keeps adding automated tools, now including a Seller Assistant plugin for Anthropic's Claude. A slower ad line does not by itself mean cheaper media, though. Without impression or pricing data, the release does not show whether advertisers paid less per click or simply bought less around a quieter third quarter.

For buyers of streaming inventory, the sports numbers are the strongest part of the release, but they belong mainly to the fourth quarter, and Amazon still does not publish a Prime Video advertising revenue figure.

What the release does not say

  • What the "couple other timing factors" behind the third-quarter ad slowdown were, or how much each contributed.
  • Any split of advertising revenue by format, by region, or between Amazon's own properties and third-party inventory.
  • Prime Video advertising revenue, an updated ad-supported audience figure, or ad load on sports broadcasts.
  • Adoption or spend figures for Amazon Ads Agent or Full-Funnel Campaigns, or any performance data for them.
  • Whether the high-teens fourth-quarter forecast excludes currency effects.
  • What the $2,875 million of other operating expense in the third quarter of 2025 was, or which securities produced the $35.97 billion of unrealized gains in the third quarter of 2026.
  • How the $220 billion capital expenditure forecast reconciles with $172.19 billion of net purchases over nine months.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Amazon.com, Inc., its chief executive Andy Jassy, and the advertisers, agencies and sellers who buy media on Amazon's store, its programmatic platform and Prime Video. Jeremy Bowman, a contributing analyst at The Motley Fool, published a preview before the release.

What: Amazon's advertising services revenue grew 10.9% to $19,637 million in the third quarter of 2026, or 12% excluding currency, down from 26% in the second quarter, and fell $172 million from the second quarter. Amazon blamed timing anomalies, primarily the move of Prime Day into the second quarter, and forecast high-teens ad growth in the fourth quarter. Net sales rose 12% to $201.9 billion, AWS grew 39.3% to $45.98 billion, operating income reached $28.1 billion at a record 13.9% margin, and trailing twelve-month free cash flow was an outflow of $42.4 billion.

When: The results were published today, October 29, 2026, for the quarter ended September 30, 2026, with a conference call at 2:00 p.m. Pacific time. Prime Day ran in June 2026 for most large countries, against July 2025.

Where: Amazon reports advertising as a global figure. Full-Funnel Campaigns are available to US advertisers, and the Nielsen viewing figures for Thursday Night Football and NBA on Prime cover the United States.

Why: Amazon's ad line is a central benchmark for retail media. The Prime Day move explains much of the third-quarter slowdown, but the high-teens fourth-quarter forecast and the 18% growth across the second and third quarters combined both sit below the 22% pace of a year ago, while Amazon asks advertisers to route more spending through AI-run campaigns without publishing data on how they perform.