Big Tech’s massive ad businesses are getting a boost from AI

Big Tech companies are not one-trick ponies. They’re complex businesses that do everything from slinging music and building hardware to running massive consumer and business platforms. They also make piles of money from advertising.

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Now the U.S. has posted better GDP growth than many expected, so we wanted to see just how much money Big Tech companies made from advertising in Q3. While selling ads is not a technology business, these companies are big enough to leverage their scale and reach to offer compelling advertising solutions.

Why wouldn’t they? Advertising is a terrific business for tech companies, even for the ones that are not primarily advertising as a way to make money.

Let’s check in on advertising results from Amazon (e-commerce and cloud), Alphabet (search and cloud), Microsoft (business software and cloud) and a few other names. The gist is that if you have big reach, you make big bucks, and if you have AI chops as well, your ability to pull in advertising dollars could grow even stronger.

The Amazon of ads

We only have to look as far as Amazon to find the key to one of the main trends at play in the advertising market.