Increasing Amazon Prime ad sales have helped boost the tech firm’s profits as it beat forecasts for sales and profit for Q1 of this year.
Advertising revenue for the period was 24% higher year-on-year.
Elsewhere, Amazon Web Service’s profits soared to £8.3 billion ($10.4bn), as the business has capitalised on artificial intelligence to customise customer experiences and continues to grow advertising sales.
The profits have tripled from £2.6 billion ($3.2bn) in the first quarter of 2024.
Net sales for Amazon Web Service also increased 13% to £114.8 billion ($143.3bn), with international sales up 10% to £25.6 billion ($31.9bn).
Amazon president and CEO Andy Jassy described it as “a good start to the year across the business” representing “both customer experience improvements and financial results”.
“The combination of companies renewing their infrastructure modernisation efforts and appeal of AWS’s AI capabilities is reaccelerating AWS’s growth rate.”
He also added that “advertising efforts” are continuing to benefit from the growth of Stores and Prime business”.
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Prime Video’s international slate of content grew with more than 30 local Amazon Originals including Operación Triunfo in Spain, India Police Force in India, and Last One Laughing in Mexico.
The growth in streaming comes despite the extra charges for its ad-free tier which it introduced earlier this year.
Net sales for advertising services grew from £7,612 million ($9,509m) in the first quarter of 2023 to £9,465.82 ($11,824m) for Q1 2024.
The retailer expects to deliver sales between £115 billion ($144bn) and £119 billion ($149bn) for the second quarter, which represents a 7% to 11% increase on last year.
“It’s very early days in all of our businesses and we remain excited by how much more we can make customers’ lives better and easier moving forward,” said Jassy.
