By Carl Wartzack, CEO, WBX
At the start of 2025, it was clear Amazon Ads was growing fast. By the end of 2025, it was clear something bigger is happening: Amazon isn’t building an ad business, it’s building the infrastructure that performance marketing runs on.
Amazon’s advertising revenue reached $17.7B in Q3 2025, up 24% year over year, and the story behind that growth matters more than the number.
Because Amazon’s advantage isn’t one product. It’s a system: intent + inventory + measurement + automation, all inside one ecosystem.
Here’s what 2025 really told us.
1) Amazon Won Full-Funnel, And It’s No Longer Optional
Amazon started as the best place to capture demand. In 2025, it became one of the most scalable places to create demand too.
Prime Video continues to expand as a premium CTV (Connected TV) asset, and Amazon’s pitch has moved from “sponsored listings” to “full-funnel outcomes.” Amazon now claims Prime Video has 315M monthly ad-supported viewers globally, which changes the scale equation for any brand that wants reach plus performance.
The implication for brands is simple: If your media plan doesn’t include Amazon streaming, you are competing with one hand tied behind your back.
2) Amazon DSP Became the Center of Gravity
The biggest signal of the year wasn’t a single product announcement. It was the list of partnerships being funneled through Amazon DSP.
By late 2025, Amazon DSP had positioned itself as a buying layer for premium inventory across major platforms, including Netflix. That’s not about access, it’s about consolidation. And once inventory consolidates, budgets follow.
3) Measurement Finally Caught Up to Ambition
The biggest reason Amazon keeps winning budgets is that it can connect exposure to action. But in 2025, it pushed measurement even further.
Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) added Prime Video viewership signals, giving advertisers the ability to analyze content engagement and build audiences based on what people watch, not just what they shop.
That’s the real unlock: Retail signals + streaming signals + privacy-safe analytics inside one environment. It’s why Amazon wins when brands are under pressure to prove ROI, and it’s why more budgets are moving to systems that can show “what actually caused the sale.”
4) AI Didn’t Just Optimize Campaigns, It Rebuilt the Workflow
In 2025, Amazon stopped treating AI as a feature and started treating it as the interface.
At unBoxed, Amazon announced Campaign Manager, unifying the Ads Console and DSP into one buying tool, plus new AI agents designed to build campaigns, generate creative, and improve measurement accessibility.
This is Amazon’s playbook: Reduce complexity → broaden adoption → accelerate spend.
The platform becomes easier, so more brands participate. More participation improves signals and outcomes. That strengthens the flywheel.
5) The End Of 2025 Reality: Amazon Is Becoming the Performance Layer for All Media
When Amazon can connect your:
- streaming impressions
- retail clicks
- product detail views
- purchases
- repeat orders
… it becomes hard for traditional platforms to compete on efficiency.
And when Amazon can simplify buying and measurement through AI-powered workflows, it becomes hard for agencies and brands to justify fragmented stacks.
This is how Amazon becomes the performance layer for CTV, retail media, audio, and beyond.
What This Means for 2026
2026 will be defined by one question:
Can your organization operate at Amazon speed?
Because the winners won’t be the brands who “run Amazon campaigns.” They’ll be the brands who build always-on systems that:
- optimize daily, not weekly
- use streaming + retail together
- track incrementality, not just ROAS
- build creative velocity through automation
- treat AMC as a core analytics asset
Where WBX Fits
At WBX, our job is straightforward: turn Amazon’s platform complexity into growth.
Amazon is making tools more accessible, but that doesn’t remove the need for strategy. It raises the bar.
The brands that win in 2026 will be the ones who get three things right:
- Full-funnel planning, not siloed spend
- Measurement discipline, not platform metrics
- Creative iteration at scale, not static ads
WBX exists to operationalize that, and to help brands execute faster than the market.
Amazon’s advertising ecosystem is no longer emerging. It’s here. And it’s not slowing down.