It all happened in Vegas.
That could cover just about anything, including a lot of stuff that’s probably best kept on the down low.
But we’re talking about Amazon’s AWS re:Invent, an annual, week-long whoop-dee-doo hosted by Amazon Web Services for the global cloud computing community.
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The event wrapped up on Dec. 6 and Amazon (AMZN) CEO Andy Jassy posted a video on X to share a few — a whole bunch, actually — of stats related to AWS re:Invent.
Among other things, Jassy said a total of 60,000 people attended, with 21 hotels across the Vegas Strip participating by either hosting meetings or putting people up for the night.
He said there were 2,000 learning sessions, while 1,200 people participated in Amazon’s 5K race, 100 people got haircuts and mustache trimmings for the Movember men’s health event, and 186 people got tattoos. So whatever happened to them in Vegas clearly isn’t going to stay in Vegas,
“So, it was a very productive somewhat quirky, very inventive week here,” Jassy said. “And I’d just like to say that for all of us that work at Amazon, this is one of our very, very favorite weeks of the year.”
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“We work really hard to try and build you features and services and capabilities and make it easier for you to improve your customer experiences and your businesses and we’re always heads down trying to deliver it for you,” he added.
We’re not sure about the quirky, but inventive and productive are key components of AWS. And the money ain’t bad either.
Amazon CEO says AWS is customers’ partner of choice
In October, Amazon said AWS generated $27.5 billion of revenue in the third quarter, a 19% increase from a year earlier and particularly impressive since it was about a sixth of the tech giant’s total quarterly revenue of $158.9 billion.
“We’ve seen significant reacceleration of AWS growth for the last four quarters,” Jassy told analysts during the company’s earnings call. “With the broadest functionality, the strongest security and operational performance, and the deepest partner community, AWS continues to be a customer’s partner of choice. There are signs of this in every part of AWS’s business.”
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Jassy said the AWS team was making rapid progress in delivering AI capabilities for customers in building a substantial AI business.
“In the last 18 months, AWS has released nearly twice as many machine learning and gen AI features as the other leading cloud providers combined,” he said.
“AWS’s AI business is a multibillion-dollar revenue run rate business that continues to grow at a triple-digit year-over-year percentage.”
He said the AI division was growing more than three times faster at this point in its evolution as AWS itself grew, “and we felt like AWS grew pretty quickly.”
Amazon shares are up nearly 51% this year and the market capitalization is around $2.41 trillion.
Analyst calls out AWS as Amazon driver, revamps stock price
AWS was one of the factors that analysts at TD Cowen listed as driving Amazon’s performance in the coming year.
The investment firm raised its price target on Amazon to $265 from $240 and affirmed a buy rating on the shares. It named Amazon as its large-cap stock pick for 2025.
In addition to accelerated revenue growth in AWS, TD Cowen also pointed to continued expansion of operating-profit margin and the potential for capital allocation due to a growing net cash position.
Amazon’s operating-margin expansion is expected to be fueled by AWS and advertising, with e-commerce also benefiting from reduced costs.
TD Cowen also mentioned the ramp-up of advertising on Prime Video as an additional catalyst for Amazon’s revenue.
TD Cowen sees value in Amazon Prime Video ads
Amazon Prime Video began showing ads on Jan. 29.
TD Cowen expects the introduction of ads to not only generate direct revenue but also drive further conversions of low-average selling-price goods, thanks to faster delivery options, the firm said.
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Amazon Prime Video reported $11.2 billion in revenue from subscription services in Q3, up 11% increase from year ago.
Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky told analysts that Amazon sees “many opportunities to further expand our ads offering in areas that are driving growth today like sponsored products, as well as more recent growth areas like Prime Video ads.”
In October, Kelly Day, vice president of Prime Video International, told the Financial Times that Amazon would offer more Prime Video ad slots to advertisers next year. While not getting into specifics, Day confirmed that Prime Video’s ad load would “ramp up a little bit more into 2025.”
Amazon Prime Video has 85% of its user base on its partly advertising-based tier, Next TV reported in May, citing data from Hub Entertainment Research. That compares with 22% for Netflix (NFLX) , which launched its ad-supported tier in November 2022.
“Virtually overnight, Amazon Prime Video dramatically transformed the video advertising ecosystem,” Mark Loughney, senior consultant for media-industry researcher Hub, said in a statement.
“Suddenly advertisers have the ability to reach tens of millions of viewers on one platform, with robust targeting capabilities and a vast retail capability. Amazon has immediately launched themselves into ‘must buy’ territory for advertisers and media agencies.”
Amazon is seeking to dismiss a class action lawsuit that alleges the company misled Prime subscribers by introducing a fee for what had been ad-free streaming of movies and TV shows.
The company said in an Oct. 4 filing that its terms and conditions stated that Amazon might “choose in its sole discretion to add or remove Prime membership benefits,” Variety reported.
“Amazon never promised — to Prime members or anyone else — that Prime Video would be always, or entirely, ad-free,” the company said in the filing in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington in Seattle.
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