Amazon saw slowed growth in its advertising revenue in the year’s third quarter, claiming its decision to host Prime Day for most larger countries in the year’s second quarter and unfavorable foreign exchange rates contributed to a softer earnings report than Wall Street analysts expected.

The past four quarters for Amazon’s advertising segment saw growth hover around 22% year-over-year before increasing to 26% in 2026’s second quarter. In Q3, the company’s ad revenue growth decelerated to 11%, a drop the company attributed to changes in foreign exchange rates and the shifting of Prime Day. The company anticipates advertising growth to increase to the “high teens” during the fourth quarter.

Amazon reported $201.9 billion in net sales and a diluted earnings per share of $1.89. Wall Street analysts expected the company to report $202.31 billion in revenue with an EPS of $1.96, according to an analyst consensus compiled by LSEG.

Its stock was down 4% post-market close following the earnings report. For its fourth quarter, the company projects its revenue to grow between 12% and 16% to between $240 billion and $247 billion,

North American revenue rose 6% to $ 112.9 billion, while international revenue increased 5% to $43.1 billion. The company saw revenue in Amazon Web Services increase by 39% to $46 billion, the fastest growth for the sector in nearly five years and nearly 20 percentage points higher than its 20% growth in 2025’s third quarter.

“Our AWS investment in functionality and infrastructure is working, with over 39% year-over-year revenue growth in Q3 ($184 billion revenue run rate) and projected revenue growth rates of over 40% both in 2027 and in 2028,” said Andy Jassy, Amazon’s president and CEO, in prepared remarks. “Our broader selection and speedier delivery are helping us capture more retail market segment share with improving margins, and our newer businesses, ranging from Grocery to Pharmacy to Amazon Leo to Zoox are progressing encouragingly. There has never been a trillion dollar revenue business, and we may have two of them in the next 5-10 years.”

Jassy remained bullish on the growth of AWS throughout the company’s earnings call on Thursday. He repeatedly highlighted its run rate and revenue growth as he said it’d fuel users’ adoption of AI, which he called “the biggest transformation in our lifetime.”

“As more and more people are using AI in a very broad way, it drives a lot of the core in capabilities like reinforcement learning and post training and tool calling,” he said, highlighting its family of Graviton processors. “Those things are really driving very significant growth. The amount of capacity we add each quarter will vary, but at this scale, to be projecting growing over 40% year-over-year in each of 2027 and 2028, is pretty significant. And the fact that we believe that this can be a trillion-dollar revenue business in five to 10 years, it’s an extraordinary, unusual opportunity that we’re very excited to be pursuing.”