Amazon's advertising segment reported $17.2 billion in Q1 2026, up 22% year over year. On a trailing twelve-month basis, that puts the business at $70 billion — third globally behind Alphabet and Meta, and larger than all of YouTube advertising just four years ago.
Most coverage treats this as an earnings beat. That's the wrong frame. The more useful question is: if Amazon is the third-largest digital ad platform on earth, why is it still treated as an afterthought in most DTC media plans?
This was never just a tool for Amazon sellers
Amazon's ad revenue is not Sponsored Products listings. Amazon DSP runs across the open web, connected TV, streaming audio, and now directly into Netflix's inventory. The Q1 2026 earnings call confirmed a distribution strategy that most brands outside the retail media world still haven't caught up with.
New partnerships confirmed in Q1: Amazon DSP now serves direct buys against Netflix's 250 million ad-supported viewers. Audio inventory expanded with live integrations from Spotify, iHeartMedia, and SiriusXM. Add Amazon's owned properties — Prime Video, Twitch, Freevee, Fire TV — and you have a reach vehicle that competes with any independent DSP on the market.
None of that requires selling a single unit on Amazon. A brand can run Amazon DSP as a pure awareness and retargeting layer even if it ships nothing from a fulfillment center.
What Amazon's data actually is
This is the part that changes how you should think about the platform. Amazon's targeting isn't built on intent signals. It's built on transaction records.
When Google shows your ad to an in-market audience, it's inferring from search and browsing behavior that someone might buy. When Meta builds a lookalike, it's modeling from engagement patterns and declared interests. When Amazon targets an audience, it can reach people who bought a product in your category last month, at your price point, more than once.
"In-market" on Google is probabilistic. "In-market" on Amazon is a historical fact.
For a DTC skincare brand, the difference between targeting someone who searched "best moisturizer for dry skin" and targeting someone who bought a $45 moisturizer from a competitor on three separate occasions is enormous. Amazon makes the second option available to you. Most brands either don't know that or still haven't set it up.
What the Q1 announcements add operationally
Two things from the earnings call matter for planning.
First, Creative Agent expanded to Canada, France, Germany, India, Italy, Spain, and the UK. Amazon's AI-powered creative tool handles end-to-end asset production from your product data. The production barrier for running multi-market campaigns just dropped significantly — and this is now a global capability, not a US-only beta.
Second, the Netflix partnership delivers something CTV has been promising for years without actually providing: premium inventory backed by real audience intelligence. Buyers using Amazon DSP can now layer Amazon purchase signals against Netflix viewing behavior in a single targeting package. That combination is live and buyable through the standard Amazon DSP interface today.
Where this leaves your media plan
The default DTC media plan still runs roughly 60% Meta, 30% Google, and 10% everything else. That was a defensible split in 2022. Amazon has grown its advertising revenue faster than both Meta and Google for two consecutive years while simultaneously expanding its data partnerships, inventory footprint, and AI tooling.
If your product category has meaningful Amazon demand — and most physical product categories do — you are actively competing against brands with purchase-intent targeting you don't have. That gap shows up in CPMs first (Amazon's remain more efficient for in-market audiences than comparable audiences on Meta or Google) and in customer quality second: targeting repeat buyers of competitive products tends to pull in higher-LTV customers than cold interest audiences.
The argument isn't "move everything to Amazon." It's recognizing that $70 billion in ad revenue doesn't accumulate at 22% annual growth because the platform doesn't work.
Four things worth checking against your current setup: whether you're running Sponsored Brands alongside Sponsored Products, whether Amazon DSP is activated for off-Amazon retargeting, whether your product feed is clean enough for Dynamic Ads, and whether Netflix and audio inventory are part of your upfront media planning this year.
If you want a clear picture of how your current Google and Meta spend is performing before you add a third channel to manage, the free audit at Gromerce benchmarks your account against accounts in your category and spend range — takes about three minutes.
Amazon at $70 billion isn't a story about Amazon. It's a story about where your competitors' targeting data is coming from.
Sources: About Amazon, Adweek, Storyboard18, PYMNTS, May 2026
