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IN BRIEF Amazon's Q3 2026 ad revenue grew 11% to $19.64bn, down from 26% a quarter earlier, which Amazon put down to Prime Day moving into Q2. Prime Video's NFL coverage had its best start ever. YouTube ad revenue also slowed, to 9%.
Amazon's advertising revenue grew 11% to $19.64 billion (about ₩26.25 trillion) in the third quarter of 2026, or 12% excluding currency moves. That is less than half the 26% rate the company reported three months earlier. Amazon released the results on October 29.
A day earlier, Alphabet reported YouTube advertising revenue of $11.21 billion, up 9.2% from a year ago, short of analyst projections and down from 13% growth in the second quarter, Variety reported. The two biggest sellers of video advertising in the U.S. slowed in the same quarter.
Amazon blamed the calendar. Its Prime Day sales event ran in July last year, inside the third quarter. This year it moved to June for most large countries, putting it in the second quarter. The company's release said ad growth was hit by "timing anomalies primarily related to Prime Day." Taken together, advertising revenue for the second and third quarters reached $39.45 billion, up 18.1% from the same six months of 2025, according to a calculation by PPC Land.
The slowdown came in a strong quarter for Prime Video sport. Thursday Night Football opened its fifth season averaging 17.7 million viewers over six games, its best start. Amazon does not break out ad revenue by placement. But a single shopping event shifting quarters was enough to cut ad growth by more than half, which suggests Amazon's ad sales still track the retail calendar far more closely than the size of its video audience.
Revenue of $201.9bn falls short of the $202.3bn consensus
Net sales rose 12% to $201.9 billion. Analysts had expected $202.31 billion and earnings per share of $1.96, according to an LSEG consensus cited by Variety; Amazon reported diluted EPS of $1.89. The shares fell 4% in after-hours trading. Amazon said third-quarter sales growth would have been about four percentage points higher without the Prime Day shift.
Profitability hit a record. Operating income rose to $28.1 billion from $17.4 billion, for an operating margin of 13.9%, Amazon's highest ever. Net income slipped to $20.7 billion from $21.2 billion. Amazon Web Services grew 39% to $46.0 billion, its fastest pace in nearly five years. Chief executive Andy Jassy noted that no business has ever reached a trillion dollars in revenue, adding that Amazon "may have two of them in the next 5-10 years."
Subscription services, which include Prime membership fees and digital video and music subscriptions, brought in $14.01 billion, up 11%. Advertising now exceeds subscriptions by about $5.6 billion a quarter.
Amazon Q3 2026 at a glance
| Item | Q3 2026 | Comparison |
|---|---|---|
| Net sales | $201.9bn | +12% (Q3 2025: $180.2bn) |
| North America | $112.9bn | +6% |
| International | $43.1bn | +5% (+8% ex-FX) |
| AWS | $46.0bn | +39% |
| Advertising services | $19.64bn | +11% (+12% ex-FX) |
| Subscription services | $14.01bn | +11% |
| Operating income (margin) | $28.1bn (13.9%) | Q3 2025: $17.4bn |
| Net income | $20.7bn | Q3 2025: $21.2bn |
| Diluted EPS | $1.89 | LSEG consensus: $1.96 |
Source: Amazon earnings release; Variety (LSEG consensus)
Ad growth: 22% for four quarters, 26% in Q2, 11% in Q3, "high teens" guided for Q4
Amazon's ad revenue grew 22% excluding currency in each of the four quarters from Q2 2025 to Q1 2026, before accelerating to 26% in the second quarter. In the third quarter it fell $172 million from the second; a year earlier, the same step added $2.01 billion, PPC Land noted. Analysts had forecast $20.82 billion, Quartz reported, citing CNBC.
Trailing twelve-month ad revenue stands at $78.0 billion. Advertising made up 9.7% of net sales in the quarter, against 9.8% a year earlier. Amazon expects ad revenue to grow "in the high teens" in the fourth quarter. Applied to the $21.32 billion it booked in Q4 2025, growth of 17% to 19% implies $24.9 billion to $25.4 billion.
TNF averages 17.7m over six games, NBA opener tops 2m, and sports inventory sold out before the season
Amazon set out Prime Video's numbers in its release. Thursday Night Football's 17.7 million average across six games, measured by Nielsen, is 16% above last season's full-season average. NBA on Prime began its second season in more than 200 countries, and its opening doubleheader drew more than two million U.S. viewers, more than double last season's average. Season four of Reacher reached 66 million viewers worldwide in its first 28 days. Amazon MGM Studios has taken more than $1.2 billion at the global box office this year, led by Project Hail Mary and Verity.
Most of the sports inventory was sold before the games aired. In July, Jassy said advertising on Thursday Night Football, the NBA, the WNBA and NASCAR had sold out, PPC Land recalled. When the inventory is already committed, a bigger audience has limited room to lift that quarter's ad revenue. Amazon has not updated the 315 million global ad-supported Prime Video audience it disclosed in Q4 2025.
The ad products themselves are moving toward generative AI. Amazon launched Amazon Ads Agent, an AI-first platform for advertisers, and opened Full-Funnel Campaigns to all U.S. advertisers, letting a single campaign buy sponsored ads, display, video and streaming TV together. Search ads on the store and TV ads on Prime Video now sit in the same budget.
Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios in Q3
| Item | Q3 figure | Note |
|---|---|---|
| TNF season 5, first six games | 17.7m average | +16% vs last season's average; best start (Nielsen) |
| NBA on Prime season 2 opener | 2m+ (U.S.) | More than double last season's average; 200+ countries |
| Reacher season 4 | 66m (global) | First 28 days |
| Amazon MGM Studios box office | $1.2bn+ | 2026 year to date |
| Sports ad inventory | Sold out | TNF, NBA, WNBA, NASCAR (July) |
Source: Amazon earnings release; PPC Land
YouTube ads rise 9% to $11.2bn, with more than a third coming from connected TVs
YouTube's ad growth has gone from 15% in Q3 2025 to 11% in Q1 2026, 13% in Q2 and 9.2% in Q3, below analyst forecasts. Chief financial officer Anat Ashkenazi said brand advertising made the largest contribution, with "notable strength in living room," Storyboard18 reported. Chief business officer Philipp Schindler said connected-TV viewing accounted for more than a third of YouTube ad revenue worldwide in the quarter; in the U.S., the company says most YouTube viewing happens on TVs.
Subscriptions are now growing faster than advertising, Schindler told analysts, according to Variety. YouTube Music and Premium passed 150 million subscribers including trials, up from 125 million in March 2025, and more than 20 million videos are uploaded every day. At its Made on YouTube event in New York in September, the platform introduced more than 30 products, including a custom feed that lets users build channels of recommended videos on topics they choose.
On its second-quarter call in July, Google said World Cup-related advertising had been especially strong on YouTube, so the third quarter carries a tougher base. Alphabet's revenue rose 25% to $127.6 billion, but missed the LSEG consensus of $128.2 billion and EPS of $3.02; reported EPS was $2.12 after an $8.7 billion net loss on equity securities. The shares fell 8.7% after hours, TheWrap reported.
The two slowdowns have different causes. Amazon's growth dropped because its own sales event moved quarters; YouTube's eased as World Cup spending fell out of the comparison. In both cases an event calendar moved the numbers. Their revenue mix runs the other way: Amazon's advertising exceeds its subscription revenue by $5.6 billion a quarter, while YouTube's subscriptions are outgrowing its ads. Amazon's third-quarter ad revenue was 1.75 times YouTube's. Both are spending heavily: Alphabet's third-quarter capital expenditure rose 114% to $51.36 billion, with 2026 guidance of $195 billion to $205 billion, against Amazon's roughly $220 billion.
Meta ads rise 26% to $63.1bn; Netflix trims its 2026 ad target to $2.7bn
Meta's advertising revenue grew 26% to $63.06 billion in the same quarter, with ad impressions up 10% and the average price per ad up 14%, according to its quarterly filing. CFO Susan Li credited better ad performance and an improved macro backdrop for the price increase, exchange4media reported. Google Search and other revenue rose 12% to $63.35 billion.
Netflix, reporting third-quarter revenue of $12.87 billion on October 20, cut its 2026 advertising target from about $3 billion to $2.7 billion. Co-CEO Greg Peters said the company was "a bit behind our aggressive target for the year" because some ad features rolled out more slowly than planned, The Next Web reported, citing TheWrap. Netflix will bring its ad tier to 15 more countries in 2027.
The fastest growth in the quarter came from Meta's feed-based performance ads. The two video-heavy businesses, YouTube and Netflix, slowed or cut targets, while Amazon's commerce-led ad business swung with the timing of its own shopping event.
Major ad sellers in Q3 2026
| Company | Q3 ad revenue | Growth | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Meta | $63.06bn | +26% | Impressions +10%, price per ad +14% |
| Google Search | $63.35bn | +12% | Retail and finance led |
| Amazon | $19.64bn | +11% | Prime Day moved to Q2; high-teens guided for Q4 |
| YouTube | $11.21bn | +9.2% | CTV >1/3 of ad revenue; subscriptions growing faster |
| Netflix | Not disclosed | - | 2026 ad target cut from ~$3bn to $2.7bn |
Source: Amazon, Alphabet, Meta and Netflix results; Deadline; The Next Web
Korea's broadcast ad market is ₩2.01trn a year, one-thirteenth of Amazon's ad sales in a single quarter
South Korea's broadcast advertising revenue fell 12.3% to ₩2.0134 trillion (about $1.51 billion) in 2025, according to the Korea Communications and Media Commission (방송미디어통신위원회), which published broadcasters' 2025 financial data on June 19. Terrestrial broadcasters' ad revenue fell 17.0% to ₩693.6 billion ($519 million), and the group posted an operating loss of ₩117.4 billion, its third straight annual loss, Yonhap and Digital Daily reported.
Amazon's ad revenue for one quarter, about ₩26.25 trillion, is 13 times Korea's broadcast advertising for a full year and roughly 1.5 times the country's total 2025 ad spend of about ₩17.27 trillion, as estimated by the Korea Broadcast Advertising Corporation (KOBACO, 한국방송광고진흥공사). Online took about 60% of that total while broadcast advertising fell about 13%, KtN reported.
The scale gap matters less than where the money comes from. WARC forecasts global retail media spend of $196.7 billion in 2026, more than linear and connected TV combined, MADTimes reported. Amazon's quarter shows that this revenue moves with the shopping calendar rather than with ratings: ad growth fell in the very quarter its NFL audience hit a record.
For Korean broadcasters, the practical question is who sells their inventory. Amazon's demand-side platform already lets advertisers buy inventory on Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max, Paramount+ and Peacock, The Hollywood Reporter reported in October 2025, so a company holding purchase data sells other companies' video ads. In Korea, the players that combine purchase data with a video service are Coupang (쿠팡, with Coupang Play) and Naver (네이버, with Naver Plus and the Chzzk streaming platform). Terrestrial and pay-TV channels have struggled to stop the decline through their own sales teams; connecting their inventory to these commerce platforms' buying systems is the negotiation still to be had.
The same question applies to sports rights. Amazon does not recover NFL and NBA costs from advertising alone; part of the return comes back through Prime sign-ups and shopping. A Korean broadcaster that must pay for a major sports package from ad sales alone faces the gap Amazon showed this quarter, where a bigger audience did not translate into faster ad growth, and that gap belongs in the numbers at the contract stage.
Q4 sales guided at $240-247bn; 2026 capital spending near $220bn
Amazon guided fourth-quarter net sales of $240 billion to $247 billion and operating income of $28.5 billion to $33.5 billion, with advertising expected to grow in the high teens. The holiday shopping season overlaps with Thursday Night Football and the NBA in the quarter. If ad growth returns to the guided range, the numbers will bear out Amazon's explanation that the third-quarter dip was about timing.
Costs keep climbing. Amazon expects cash capital expenditure of about $220 billion in 2026, and trailing twelve-month free cash flow was an outflow of $42.4 billion, against an inflow of $14.8 billion a year earlier. Jassy projected AWS revenue growth above 40% in both 2027 and 2028, according to the earnings release. Advertising is not the main target of that spending, but tools such as Ads Agent put the same AI infrastructure to work on ad products.
YouTube points to its share of living-room viewing, and Netflix to a 15-country ad-tier rollout in 2027, as the next tests. In Korea, broadcasting revenue has fallen for three straight years while online has risen to about 60% of all ad spend. This quarter's U.S. results showed that a bigger audience does not guarantee faster ad growth. Whether Korean broadcasters can move from selling ratings to selling inventory tied to purchase data will shape next year's ad market.
Notes
Exchange rate: ₩1,336.8 per dollar (Seoul foreign exchange market close at 3:30 p.m., October 29, 2026). Conversions are rounded.
Text in quotation marks is reported or published wording; unquoted attributions summarise reporting. Remarks relayed by other outlets name that outlet.
Amazon ad growth is as reported (11%) unless stated; quarterly trend lines exclude currency effects. The Q4 ad range is PPC Land's calculation.
Sources
Amazon, Amazon.com Announces Third Quarter Results (Oct. 29, 2026)
Variety (Corbin Bolies), Amazon Ad Revenue Growth Slows in Q3 (Oct. 29, 2026)
PPC Land, Amazon ad revenue growth drops to 11% after Prime Day moves to June
TheWrap, YouTube Ad Revenue Jumps 9% in Third Quarter (Oct. 28, 2026)
The Next Web, Netflix cuts its 2026 ad sales target to $2.7B
Yonhap via Nate, broadcasting revenue falls for third year (June 19, 2026)