Adding ads to Prime Video helped Amazon bring in $12.77 billion in digital advertising revenue for the second quarter of 2024 — up 20% year-over-year. Nonetheless, analysts managed to be disappointed about it.
Analysts were expecting Amazon to report online advertising sales of $13 billion. Amazon’s advertising growth rate slowed last quarter, down from 24% in the first three months of the year. The 20% increase is the first time since the start of 2023 the company’s ad growth was less than 22%.
The company’s overall second-quarter sales were $147.98 billion, again failing to hit analysts’ estimates — this time of $148.56 billion. Net income doubled to $13.5 billion in the second quarter.
Dig deeper: Meta ad revenue up 22% in second quarter
The company noted that during the second quarter, Amazon MGM Studios released 19 films and series including: “Fallout,” the second most-watched original title worldwide ever on Prime Video during its launch, and Season 4 of “The Boys,” which was No. 1 on Prime Video in over 165 countries in its first two weeks. Amazon also touted its 62 Emmys nominations, including 17 for “Fallout” and 16 for “Mr. and Mrs. Smith.”
For this quarter, Amazon expects sales between $154 billion and $158.5 billion, which would be an increase of between 8% and 11% compared to the third quarter of 2023. The company expects operating income to be between $11.5 billion and $15 billion for the current quarter, compared with $11.2 billion for the same period last year.
