Amazon’s holiday profits soared thanks to Black Friday and Cyber Monday

The company’s fourth-quarter earnings exceeded investor expectations with profit of just over $3 billion on sales of $72.4 billion, a 20 percent increase year-over-year revenue. For Amazon, 2018 was a year of immense growth, and the tech giant capped it off with huge sales from Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and general holiday promotions that lasted through December.

Amazon gave scarce details on which products sold the best, but it did say the last three months were the best holiday season for Echo devices it’s ever had, and that its smart doorbell subsidiary Ring also enjoyed its best quarter ever. As per usual, most of the profits came from the North American segment, including the US and Canada, where users generally don’t spring for the big Asian sales event, Singles Day, which falls on November 11th every year. While Singles Day blew it out of the park when it came to analyst expectations, it saw little interest from North America, which was too busy ordering packages from Amazon.

Like AWS, Amazon’s ad sales have the potential to continue growing, as advertisers realize the tech giant is the premiere destination for a large chunk of online commerce. Although Amazon doesn’t list ads in its own sales category, and instead lumps the figure in a miscellaneous category with other services, it appears that sales have nearly doubled year over year, to $3.4 billion last quarter.

Source: The Verge