亚马逊CEO安迪·贾西在最新的股东电话会议上透露，公司计划在Alexa+语音助手中引入广告，以寻求新的营收增长点。Alexa+作为升级版语音助手，更具对话性和AI驱动能力，已吸引数百万用户。尽管Alexa已存在十年且一直无广告，但其盈利模式一直面临挑战。亚马逊此举旨在将Alexa从一个成本中心转变为盈利来源，同时避免直接提高Prime订阅费用。此举标志着亚马逊在AI产品变现策略上的重大转变，将广告定位为帮助用户发现商品的辅助工具。

💡 亚马逊CEO安迪·贾西宣布，公司将在其新一代AI语音助手Alexa+中探索广告变现模式，认为这蕴含着显著的财务机会。他表示，随着用户与Alexa进行更多多轮对话，广告将扮演帮助用户发现产品以及推动收入增长的角色。

🚀 Alexa+自推出以来已吸引数百万用户，其特点是更强的对话能力、情境感知和AI驱动，能够协助用户进行日程规划、娱乐甚至内容生成，这些服务包含在每月14.99美元的Prime订阅中。然而，与早期版本不同，Alexa+的广告模式尚属首次引入。

💰 亚马逊曾将Alexa定位为一项“巨大的失败”，因其成本高昂且难以货币化。此次引入广告是亚马逊试图改变Alexa“烧钱”现状，将其转变为盈利工具的关键一步，且目标是在不立即提高订阅费用的前提下实现。

📈 亚马逊并非唯一探索AI产品盈利模式的公司。谷歌和OpenAI也在考虑在各自的AI产品中整合广告。OpenAI CEO萨姆·奥特曼的态度转变尤为引人注目，他从最初反对在ChatGPT中植入广告，转变为可能为未来版本敞开大门。

🛍️ 贾西强调，Alexa+的广告将以“有益”的形式呈现，旨在帮助客户发现他们可能感兴趣并购买的产品。这意味着广告将被设计成一种辅助用户决策的工具，而非干扰项。具体的广告形式和用户体验仍有待明确。

It’s the end of another quarter, which means it’s time for yet another earnings call with concerning ideas for generating more revenue. This time around, it's Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, who told shareholders on Thursday that there’s “significant financial opportunity” in delivering ads through Alexa+, the company’s new AI-powered voice assistant.

“I think over time, there will be opportunities, you know, 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,” Jassy said, per the investor call transcript.

Since launching earlier this year, Alexa+ has reportedly reached millions of users. Unlike the original Alexa, which mostly turns off lights and sets timers, Alexa+ is designed to be more conversational, context-aware, and AI-driven. It can help you plan your date night, entertain your kids, and even dabble in basic image and video generation — all under the banner of your $14.99/month Prime subscription.

But so far, Amazon Alexa has been an ad-free experience. It's also more than 10 years old, and it doesn't make money; thus, it's been deemed a "colossal failure" by those within the company.

Of course, Amazon isn’t alone in trying to figure out how to make AI pay for itself. Both Google and OpenAI have explored ad integration in their AI products as a way to generate revenue. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, in particular, has made a notable pivot: once firmly against advertising in his chatbot, he’s since reversed course, possibly opening the door for ads in future versions of ChatGPT.

Whatever the motivation, injecting ads into Alexa+ would mark a major shift in both user experience and Amazon’s strategy, especially given the assistant’s long history of being expensive to maintain and hard to monetize. Ad-supported Alexa+ could be Amazon’s attempt to finally turn its once-money-burning smart assistant into a revenue machine, without hiking the subscription fee (at least for now).

Alexa+ is still new, and what an ad-supported experience would actually look like remains unclear. According to Jassy, the idea is to frame ads as helpful, something to assist customers in discovering products they might be interested in buying.