Ads could soon be coming to your conversations with Amazon’s freshly revamped digital assistant, Alexa+.
Amazon’s CEO Andy Jassy said in a recent earnings call, spotted by News, that “there will be opportunities, as people are engaging in more multi-turn conversations, to have advertising play a role to help people find discovery, and also as a lever to drive revenue.”
On the call with investors, Jassy teased adding “some sort of subscription element beyond what there is today” as it adds new features to Alexa+. News posited this could mean we’ll see an ad-free tier if ads are eventually introduced, but this is merely speculation at this point.
It’s unclear how consumers will react to the move, particularly as Alexa+ isn’t free to begin with. It costs users in the US $19.99 per month unless they are already forking out $14.99 for Amazon Prime, which includes access to the service.
After a development process allegedly hampered by a myriad of technical issues, Alexa+ started rolling out to users’ Amazon Echo devices earlier this year, albeit with a limited feature set compared to Amazon’s final vision for the product. At the official launch event, the tech giant promised Alexa+ would offer a less robotic, more human-like experience compared to its predecessor, which launched over a decade ago. Amazon execs promised agentic AI functionality—for example, booking flights or concert tickets without much human intervention.
The CEO’s statements shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to anyone who has been following Amazon’s business particularly closely. Despite there being roughly 500 million Alexa-enabled devices, its Devices & Services unit has been a huge money sink for the company. It lost $25 billion between 2017 and 2021, according to a Wall Street Journal report, meaning there’s plenty of incentive to drum up new revenue streams.
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It’s not just Amazon—advertising could one day be coming to the world of mainstream AI assistants whether consumers like it or not.
Microsoft is currently trying to attract more advertisers to its Copilot platform. Meanwhile, in May, Google announced it has already started testing ads within its AI responses, specifically in AI Mode on Google Search, a new product built into its search page. And in March, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said he is “not opposed” to ads in the company’s tools, but only if there was “good reason” and it could be done “tastefully.”
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About Will McCurdy
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