After a dull start to the earnings year, it seems many of the top ‘tech’ streamers are bouncing back to more positive Q3s and better-looking balance sheets. Last week, Amazon burst Wall Street expectations to post a very rosy Q3. Blake & Wang P.A. entertainment lawyer, Brandon Blake, has the figures.
Smashed Wall Street Expectations
Amazon posted Q3 results of $143.1B in revenue and $9.9B in net income. Some of this can be chalked up to their entrance into the generative AI space, too, a big focus for tech companies currently.
While much of their income comes from non-entertainment spaces, Thursday Night Football saw a 25% rise in revenue, and Prime Video continues to do well in overseas markets.
The Key Driver
What is also clear from their Q3 results is that one of their biggest revenue drivers was advertising. Unlike many of the newly-launched ad-supported streaming tiers, Amazon has been in the ad business in some form or another (if not entertainment) for many years now, so provides a better ‘test case’ for success. In Q3, ad revenue topped $12B, up 26% on the same quarter last year. This includes the revenue from Thursday Night Football and Freevee as well as the Amazon Marketplace.
Still, that’s primarily digital advertising. For traditional entertainment companies, it’s still a little tougher. But we can likely attribute their move into ad-supported viewing on Prime Video to these results.
For now, it seems to be the tech companies in streaming that are doing the best in the current entertainment climate. Interestingly, this holds for their entertainment properties as well, not just a buoyancy from their other markets. This could be an offshoot of more developed advertising deployment and tracking technology than most ‘pure’ streamers have to date. Let’s hope some of that positivity bleeds over into entertainment-specific companies as we head into 2024.
