Amazon Now Number 3 Digital Ad Platform

U-S digital ad revenues at Amazon will more than double this year, eMarketer estimates, moving it up the ranks past Oath and Microsoft to take the No. 3 position behind Facebook and Google.

US advertisers will spend $4.61 billion on Amazon’s platform this year, accounting for 4.1% of all digital ad spending in the country. It’s important to note that much of that growth is thanks to an accounting change Amazon made that affected estimates for 2018 and later, leading to the growth spike this year.

Even so, the forecast increases eMarketer’s estimate of ad revenues at Amazon by about 10% to 12% over the course of the year, thanks to stronger-than-expected organic growth.

And that increase is clearly still robust. After 2018’s artificial growth spike, eMarketer expects increases of more than 50% per year through at least 2020, when Amazon will enjoy 7.0% of all US digital ad spending.

For more than a year now there’s been a steady murmur about Amazon’s encroachment on the territory of the Facebook-Google duopoly. This year, 57.7% of US digital ad spending will go to one of those two platforms. Amazon may be in third place, but 4.1% is far behind Facebook’s 20.6% or Google’s 37.1% of market share. In 2020, Amazon’s 7.0% share will compare with Facebook’s 20.8% and Google’s 35.1% of US digital ad spending. So while the gap may be narrowing, the duopoly pillar still stands.