It looks like 2018 will be the year Amazon will be remembered for their advertising business. It is estimated to now be the third-largest ad seller in the U.S. behind Google and Facebook with 4% market share. If the product changes and develops we saw this year keep up the momentum, then that will help further fuel advertiser investment.
Amazon is still categorizing its ad business under an “other” line item in its earnings reports. That segment topped $2 billion for the first time in Q1 and continued to see triple-digit growth year over year in the subsequent quarters, which reached 2.945 billion in Q3.
From Marketing Land’s Amazon Advertising Forecast 2019, based on a survey of more than 600 marketers, what stood out is the amount of runway ahead for Amazon advertising in terms of growing advertiser adoption, investment and development. Of the 80% of respondents who said they plan to increase Amazon advertising budgets next year, 60 percent expect to spend as much as 25% of their annual digital ad budget on Amazon. More than half plan to fund increased spend with incremental budget, 30% plan to shift budget from search, 24% said budgets will come from display or other non-digital budget lines such as print or TV and 21 percent said budgets will come from paid social.
Several Amazon marketers were asked for their thoughts on the biggest changes in 2018 and what they mean for advertisers and Amazon sellers in the year ahead.