Amazon Delivers Strong Q4 Results, Topping Wall Street Forecasts In Holiday Period As Ad Revenue Climbs 27%

Amazon delivered better-than-expected results in the fourth quarter of 2023, with revenue up 14% year-over-year in a strong holiday season.

Revenue of $170 billion exceeded Wall Street analysts’ consensus forecast for $166 billion. Earnings of a dollar per share soared above the year-ago quarter’s 3 cents a share and came in well ahead of estimates for 80 cents.

The quarter included the bulk of Prime Video‘s exclusive NFL Thursday Night Football games. The games posted a 24% increase in viewership over 2022 levels and have been a pillar of the company’s growing video ad business.

Revenue from advertising services overall, a category that includes streaming video, rose 27% from the year-ago period to $14.654 billion. In addition to the live sports on Prime, the tech giant is also pushing ads across Twitch, Freevee and Fire TV. Prime Video’s scripted film and TV titles are beginning to include ads as of this week.

With all eyes on Big Tech to ramp up their artificial intelligence capabilities, Amazon also announced the launch of an AI-shopping assistant called Rufus. The feature is trained on Amazon’s product catalog and information from across the internet and can answer customer questions about products. Rufus is launching Thursday in beta for “a small subset” of customers in Amazon’s mobile app, the company said, with a wider rollout in the U.S. to come over the next few weeks.

MORE to come …