Happy Sunday,
Here’s a quick roundup of last week’s news:
Chart of the Week :
Amazon shook off tariff pressure in Q2:
Third-party seller services revenue: $40.35B, +11% Y/Y (Q2-2025 vs Q2-2024). These are commissions + FBA/fulfillment + shipping fees, not including ads.
3P share of paid units: 62% (up from 61% LY). WW paid units were +12% Y/Y. The slight outperformance of units vs. 3P fee revenue suggests relatively stable to modestly lower effective fee intensity per unit (mix matters).
Advertising services: $15.69B, +23% Y/Y—the fastest-growing commerce line. This is a high-margin layer largely tied to marketplace discovery (sellers and vendors), and it continues to expand LTV per transaction independent of whether the unit is 1P or 3P.
WW shipping costs +6% Y/Y (to $23.37B) vs. +12% paid-unit growth → implied ~5% lower shipping cost per paid unit (1.064/1.12 − 1 ≈ –5%), pointing to continued gains from regionalized networks and faster-route delivery.
International segment net sales +16% to $36.76B and margin 4.1% (vs. 0.9% LY), signaling improved efficiency and scale in non-U.S. marketplaces. North America net sales +11% to $100.07B with a 7.5% margin (vs. 5.6% LY). Both support marketplace health and reinvest capacity.
Movers & Shakers 🙌
$54M topline revenue — Rainforest Reports Strong Core Category Growth And Positive Operating Cash Flow For Second Consecutive Year In FY2024 As It Shifts To Focus On Parenting Brands Portfolio Growth [Rainforest]
Strategy ♟
Next content deal: ‘Amazon to Pay New York Times at Least $20 Million a Year in AI Deal’ [Wall Street Journal]
Amazon Reports Strong Retail Demand, but Says Future Is Less Clear [New York Times]
Amazon’s other businesses continue to outpace retail [RetailDive]
Amazon Sees Agentic AI Customers Shaping Future Growth [PYMNTS.com]
Amazon CEO wants to put ads in your Alexa+ conversations [TechCrunch]
Amazon Makes Bad Seller Reviews Worse [Marketplace Pulse]
'It fundamentally changes what it means to be an e-commerce brand': What a ChatGPT checkout system could mean for retail [Modern Retail]
EBay Projects Sales That Top Estimates on Consumer Resilience [Bloomberg]
Amazon Locks Down Against Google’s AI Shopping Agents [The Information]
Your public ChatGPT queries are getting indexed by Google and other search engines [TechCrunch]
TikTok doubles down on Search Ads as commerce ambitions cool [Search Engine Land]
Temu Hits Roadblock in Efforts to Compete With Amazon [PYMNTS.com]
EU Commission preliminarily finds Temu in breach of the Digital Services Act [EU Commission]
Tariffs… or automation 🤔 : ‘Marketplace Briefing: Consultants that support online merchants see business slowdown amid tariff pressure’ [Modern Retail]
Events 🎤
Amazon Ads Developer Summit, New York Aug 5-6
Amazon Accelerate, Seattle Sep 16-18
Amz Innovate, New York Oct 10-12
Amazon UnBoxed, Nashville Nov 10-12
Make this week count - A full Prime Week is about to start 🙌
Christian