In today’s ExchangeWire news digest: Amazon’s ad revenue nears $20bn a quarter as it bets on an AI buying agent, Walmart brings its shopper data to Vibe’s self-serve CTV platform, and Reach titles suffer the steepest audience falls among the UK’s biggest news sites

Amazon ad revenue nears $20bn per quarter

Amazon’s advertising arm brought in almost USD$20bn (£15.2bn) in the third quarter, up 12% year on year, as the company reported total revenue of USD$201.9bn (£153.4bn), also up 12%. Ad revenue slipped slightly from USD$19.81bn (£15.1bn) in Q2 to USD$19.64bn (£14.9bn), though the comparison is skewed because Prime Day fell in Q2 this year. Amazon expects advertising revenue to grow in the high teens in the fourth quarter.

A key growth driver is Amazon Ads Agent, unveiled at its unBoxed conference, which merges sponsored ads, display, video and audio buying into one AI-driven experience. Advertisers can plan campaigns, generate creative, forecast reach and adjust budgets using natural-language instructions. Amazon claims beta tests showed up to 67% higher return on long-term ad spend and 29% lower cost per new-to-brand customer than manually built campaigns. 

Walmart brings shopper data to Vibe

Walmart has made its first-party audiences available inside Vibe in the first major integration step since the deal. Advertisers can now build CTV campaigns in Vibe’s campaign builder using Walmart Audiences, which draw on shopping behaviour online and in stores. Targeting options include category purchases, life stages, lifestyle interests, seasonal moments and shopping habits, alongside advertisers’ own customer data.

Walmart Connect builds and maintains the audiences, while Vibe continues to handle buying, optimisation, measurement and reporting. Results can be tracked through Vibe’s existing tools, including purchase-level attribution on advertisers’ own sites and incrementality testing. Vibe co-founder and CEO Arthur Querou said the data adds more precise targeting rooted in what households actually buy.

Reach leads audience declines across UK’s biggest News sites

The four biggest year-on-year audience declines among the UK’s 50 largest news websites in September all hit titles owned by Reach, according to Ipsos Iris data analysed by Press Gazette. Chronicle Live fell furthest, down 45.8% to a UK audience of 2.5 million, followed by the Daily Record, down 42.1% to 4.7 million. Birmingham Live lost 33.8% of its audience, falling to 6.3 million, and the Manchester Evening News dropped 31.3% to 9.7 million.

The slump was not confined to Reach: of the top 50 news brands, 38 recorded lower monthly audiences than a year earlier.