Amazon's $78bn ad machine now writes the defaults

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This is Marketing Is Calling, the audio edition of Landline, the daily newsletter from PPC Land. It's Saturday, November 14th, 2026 And today's episode is a special on Amazon's advertising business and on who now makes the decisions inside it. This episode is read by an AI voice. Let's start with a help page that almost nobody will read. On Friday morning, PPC Land reported that Amazon's guide to building a DVA Plus campaign, updated the day before, now limits each automated campaign to 20 products. It offers three ways in, with automated ones selected by default. It lists seven possible objectives, but shows each advertiser only the ones it's eligible for. And it advises against budget caps because they can cause under delivery. Two days earlier, another page told agencies that the fee setting they've used on each campaign can only be applied until January 31, 2027 After that, agency fees move into manager accounts that Amazon designs. One line on that page says it all. Amazon doesn't bill agency fees. None of this was announced on a stage. It's the plumbing of a business that took in $78 billion in advertising over the 12 months to the end of September. And it shows where that business is heading, from selling inventory to the people who plan media, to deciding by default how the media is planned. The full special at ppc.land runs to more than 20,000 words, with 17 tables, a 10-year revenue series, and a timeline to 2027 If you buy media on Amazon, it's the version to keep.

First, the numbers. Amazon didn't publish an advertising figure of its own until February 2022 Before that, the money sat in a line called Other. In 2016, that line was worth less than $3 billion. In the 12 months to September 2026, advertising brought in $78 billion. That's roughly 26 times as much. Over the same stretch, Amazon's total sales grew a little under six times. Advertising has gone from about 2% of Amazon's sales to nearly 10

The pandemic was the turning point. On March 17th, 2020, Amazon told sellers it would prioritize household staples and medical supplies in its warehouses. For a few weeks, the question was whether there was anything left to advertise. Then the money arrived. Advertising grew 44% in the first quarter of 2020 and 64% in the fourth.

One Merkle executive described advertisers taking money from their holistic budgets to support Amazon as a growth channel. Brands that had treated Amazon as a shop learned to treat it as a media channel. Growth then settled at around 20% a year. In 2022, Amazon's own retail sales barely moved and advertising still grew 21%.

In 2025, it reached $68.6 billion.

This year brought the first real wobble. Third quarter advertising grew just 10.9% to $19.64 billion. Amazon blamed timing. Prime Day moved into June and there were no NBA games. Take the second and third quarters together and growth was about 18%.

For the fourth quarter, Amazon expects the high teens.

Now Prime Video.

In September 2023, Amazon announced that films and series would carry limited ads and promised meaningfully fewer ads than linear TV.

What made it different was the direction of the default. Netflix and Disney invited people to move down to a cheaper plan with ads. Amazon put every existing member on the ad plan at once, starting January 29th, 2024, and charged those who objected to leave.

Nobody had to sign up. The largest ad-supported streaming audience in the United States was created by a setting.

By its first upfront in May 2024, Amazon claimed 200 million viewers a month worldwide. By late 2025, it was 315 million across 16 countries. The ad load roughly doubled from two to three and a half minutes an hour to four to six. And the price of leaving went up from $299 to $499 a month in April.

In Germany, a Munich court ruled that Amazon's email announcing the change was misleading, though that judgment wasn't final.

Then came sports. Amazon pays about a billion dollars a year for Thursday Night Football and about $1.8 billion a year for the NBA on reported figures. Thursday games now average 17.7 million viewers, up 17%.

By the second quarter, sports inventory had sold out. Amazon's ad sales chief, Alan Moss, says football brought in 80 net new advertisers and basketball 30 in its first year. Asked whether AI agents would ever handle upfront negotiations, he gave a one word answer, never.

Next, the demand side platform. Amazon's pitch here has always been price, and it's the most misreported part of the story. The numbers you hear are real, but narrow. There's no platform fee on programmatic guaranteed deals for Amazon's own media, and 1% on premium open web guaranteed deals. Those figures cover one way of buying, not everything. Audience and data fees are charged on top. From June, 2025, Amazon wired its DSP into almost every big source of premium video and audio. Roku, Disney, Netflix, Sirius XM, Spotify. Microsoft even sent its own buyers to Amazon when it wound down its DSP.