According to Fast Company, Amazon ushered in a new era for TV advertising by converting Prime Video into an ad-supported experience by default in 2024. By mid-year, roughly 130 million US viewers were on the ad tier, watching between four and six minutes of ads per hour. Under VP Kelly MacLean, Amazon’s been rolling out adtech tools to help businesses reach viewers on Prime Video and even rivals like Netflix and Disney. The company also introduced an AI-powered video generator to help create ads. This push is paying off massively: Amazon Ads brought in $47 billion so far this year and grew 24% last quarter, while AWS revenue hit $91 billion in the first nine months of 2025.
The Streaming Ad Wars Are Officially Here
Here’s the thing: Amazon isn’t just building another revenue stream. It’s building the everything store for TV ads. And they’re doing it with the same playbook that made AWS dominant—provide the infrastructure that even your competitors end up using. The fact that Amazon’s tools help advertisers buy spots on Netflix and Disney is absolutely wild when you think about it. They’re becoming the plumbing for the entire streaming ad ecosystem.
Who Wins And Who Loses?
So who gets crushed here? Traditional TV networks, for starters. They’re watching their advertising lunch get eaten by a company that started by selling books. But even other streaming giants should be nervous. Amazon has something nobody else can match: terrifyingly detailed purchase data. They can tell an advertiser not just who saw their car commercial, but who actually went and bought a car the next week. That’s a level of targeting that makes traditional TV ads look like throwing darts blindfolded.
Amazon’s Next Cash Cow
Look at those numbers again. $47 billion in ad revenue growing at 24% while AWS—the profit engine that defined Amazon for a decade—is still growing at 18%. We’re watching the birth of Amazon’s next juggernaut in real time. The scary part? This is probably just the beginning. As more viewing shifts to streaming, and as Amazon rolls out more AI tools to simplify ad creation, this business could eventually rival their cloud division. Basically, if you thought Amazon was powerful before, just wait until they control what you watch and what you buy during the commercials.
