At a time when Facebook parent Meta Platforms is still reconciling with its depleted market value owing to weak forecasts made on Wednesday, rival Amazon moved another step forward as it revealed contours of a mammoth ad business.

Amazon pulled the veil off its sprawling advertising business for the first time on Thursday, revealing a business larger than that of Google’s YouTube.

Amazon reported ad revenue of $9.7 billion for the fourth quarter, up 32 percent from last year, and $31 billion for the year. YouTube posted $28.8 billion in ad revenue for 2021.

Analyst Benedict Evans on Twitter said that made Amazon’s ad revenue similar in size to the entire global newspaper industry, and Statista put global newspaper annual ad spending at $29.5 billion.

Amazon, known for e-commerce, has a lucrative cloud business, AWS, and the ad business is seen as extremely profitable, although Amazon did not break out those profit numbers, Reuters reported

Amazon serves ads on its website and wake screens of some of its tablets, using search queries by its customers to help target ads. Those ads are often by companies selling on its marketplace.

“Selling digital ad space is a cash generative nice-to-have in times of uncertainty,” said Sophie Lund-Yates, equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown.

Meta Platforms Inc. shattered confidence in the online advertising industry on Wednesday, saying privacy changes by Apple Inc. had made it harder for advertisers.

An Amazon official however told reporters that brands’ ability to reach consumers across its ad properties was “largely unchanged” after Apple’s changes.

Lund-Yates saw Amazon’s ad business more in line with Google parent Alphabet , which also has its own data about customers from its search system, and shrugged off the Apple changes.

Amazon’s ad revenue growth has been decelerating from 88 percent in the second quarter. But the totals also make it larger by sales than Pinterest  and Snap, which also reported strong results on Thursday.

Prime Susbcriptions Raised:Amazon.com Inc. on Thursday said it was raising the price of its annual U.S. Prime subscriptions by 17 percent, as it looks to offset higher costs for shipping and wages that it expects to persist this year.

Now, as analysts have expected, Amazon is raising the price of Prime. The US monthly fees for the fast-shipping and media service are increasing to $14.99 from $12.99, and annual membership is going up to $139, from $119, Reuters reported from San Francisco and Bengaluru.

Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky told reporters on a conference call that Amazon expected some members to quit, but retention loss “hasn’t been large in the past”. The annual fees last went up by the same amount four years ago, and four years before that.

Revenue per Prime member “did grow significantly during the pandemic”, Olsavsky added.

With more than 200 million members globally, Prime is an incentive to consumers to direct more of their shopping to Amazon. That way, they make the most of their subscriptions. Revenue from such fees for the fourth quarter rose 15 percent to $8.1 billion.

The company announced no changes for Prime members outside the United States.

 The change is effective February 18 for new members and reflects greater benefits such as savings on prescription drugs and faster delivery, Amazon said.

For the holiday quarter, Amazon earned $14.3 billion, double its net income from a year earlier. That included a pre-tax gain of $11.8 billion from its stake in electric car maker Rivian Automotive.