Amazon’s revenue rises based on Q3 data

According to Amazon’s announcement published on 29. Oct. the financial results for its third quarter ended September 30, 2020 was spectacular.

Online rise, offline decline

Amazon’s advertising revenue reached $5.4 billion in Q3 from a year earlier as marketers began to spend more heavily on digital advertising after canceling or delaying campaigns at the pandemic’s onset. The faster growth indicates that many marketers recognized a need to ramp up ad spending on Amazon to reach homebound shoppers when they were most ready to buy products. Its strong ad revenue growth is likely to continue into the holiday season, if recent metrics are any indication.

More than half (52%) of U.S. shoppers plan to visit Amazon first for their holiday shopping, while 42% plan to buy most of their gifts through its site, a survey by software company Episerver found. With those shoppers crowding onto Amazon’s site, marketers likely will boost ad spending and other promotional activities to grab their attention.

“We’re seeing more customers than ever shopping early for their holiday gifts, which is just one of the signs that this is going to be an unprecedented holiday season,” Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO, said in a statement.

Subscription revenue, which includes the fees that people pay for Amazon Prime memberships, audiobooks, digital video, digital music and e-books, rose 33% as people shopped online or consumed more electronic media while stuck at home.

Amazon’s ad revenue growth this year helps to solidify its place as the third-biggest digital ad platform in the U.S. behind Google and Facebook, which also saw growth in Q3 as marketers increased spending.

Focus on jobs and employees

In the Q3 report Jeff Bezos enhanced that 2 years ago Amazon initiated the increase of minimum wage and challenged other large employers to do the same. Many have stepped up. Now is a great time to go on with healthcare and industry-leading pay.

This year Amazon created over 400 000 jobs all over the world. Amazon opened 100 new operations buildings across North America and created 100,000 new permanent jobs. There are 100,000 new seasonal jobs with Amazon Air, logistics, fulfillment centers, sortation centers, and global specialty fulfillment teams in the U.S. and Canada. 10,000 new permanent jobs in the UK, bringing the total in the country to 40,000; and thousands of new permanent jobs in Germany, bringing the total in the country to 16,000. In India, Amazon announced the expansion of its operations network with 10 new fulfillment centers, 5 new sortation centers, nearly 200 delivery stations, and over 100,000 seasonal jobs to help meet customer demand during the festive season. The company also launched an all-women delivery station in the state of Gujarat – the second of its kind in the country and part of the company’s ongoing efforts to provide more opportunities for women to build careers at Amazon.

More than 320,000 people attended Amazon’s Career Day, a virtual event that provided insights, tips, and advice to job seekers on how to build their career and apply for more than 130,000 corporate, technology, and operations positions available at Amazon in North America. Amazon received a record 384,000 applications for roles in Canada and the U.S. within a week of announcing the event.

Amazon continues to ramp up its in-house COVID-19 testing program to keep front-line employees safe, with capacity reaching 50,000 tests a day across 650 sites by November. To support communities disproportionately impacted by COVID-19, Amazon announced it will make millions of dollars in product and monetary donations to more than a thousand charities this holiday season all over the world.

In the quarterly report there are details of supporting communities, protecting the planet, empowering small and medium-sized businesses, developing Amazon devices and Alexa and the Amazon Web Services.