Amazon becomes the biggest advertiser in history after spending $16.9bn last year

Amazon has revealed it spent $16.9 billion (£12.5 billion) on advertising last year, likely making it the largest advertiser in history.

The ecommerce behemoth said “advertising and other promotional costs to market our products and services” leapt by 55% to $6 billion.

It saw its net sales rise consistently over the course of the pandemic from $280.5 billion in 2019 to $470 billion last year.

Amazon’s total marketing costs, which include wages and sales commission for cloud platform Amazon Web Services (AWS), rose 48% to $32.6bn in 2021.

Charged Retail