Amazon reported last week that net sales for 2017’s third quarter, ended September 30, were $43.7 billion, a 34% increase over the same quarter the prior year. The Seattle-headquartered e-commerce giant said that Q3 net income tallied $256 million, or $0.52 per diluted share, compared with net income of $252 million, or $0.52 per diluted share, in the third quarter of 2016. Meanwhile, operating cash flow increased 14% to $17.1 billion for the trailing twelve months, compared with $15 billion for the trailing 12 months ended September 30, 2016. Amazon has a presence in the branded merchandise industry through its Amazon Custom and Merch by Amazon platforms.

In calling attention to a myriad of quarterly highlights, Amazon noted that its Amazon Business service launched Business Prime Shipping, offering unlimited free two-day shipping for multi-user customers in the U.S. and Germany. Amazon Business also expanded to Japan and India, and now serves businesses in all five countries. Amazon Business is an online B2B marketplace that allows end-buyer businesses to buy products directly, explicitly cutting out the middleman. It’s a model that, along with other Amazon initiatives, has some in the promotional products industry concerned.

In discussing Q3 highlights, Amazon CEO/Founder Jeff Bezos was especially excited about advancements being made with Alexa – a voice-interactive intelligent personal assistant.

“In the last month alone, we’ve launched five new Alexa-enabled devices, introduced Alexa in India, announced integration with BMW, surpassed 25,000 skills, integrated Alexa with Sonos speakers, taught Alexa to distinguish between two voices, and more. Because Alexa’s brain is in the (Amazon Web Services) cloud, her new abilities are available to all Echo customers, not just those who buy a new device,” said Bezos. “And it’s working – customers have purchased tens of millions of Alexa-enabled devices, given Echo devices over 100,000 5-star reviews, and active customers are up more than 5 times since the same time last year.”

Beyond Alexa advancements, Amazon is pushing to populate its web platform with more promotional and instructional product videos. As Bloomberg reports, Amazon has invited approximately 2 million merchant partners to participate in a test program that sees the e-commerce company coordinating the creation of short product videos. Reportedly, the aim is to have many videos posted online by mid-December to catch the attention – and business – of holiday shoppers. The video service is a bid to cater to consumer demand for product videos – and to keep shoppers from visiting competitors’ YouTube and Facebook in search of such videos.