Advertising is Amazon's fastest-growing business and is expected to surpass $17 billion this year. Here are the 19 top insiders leading the charge.

• Amazon is betting big on advertising and building out new ad formats, conversion-focused measurement tools, and a self-serve platform to win over marketers.
• Business Insider identified 19 executives leading these initiatives and more at Amazon Advertising. They represent a variety of roles and a mix of longtime employees and newer hires from agencies and media companies.
• The list reflects people working on newer growth areas like over-the-top advertising as well as Amazon's core performance-based ad business serving big consumer packaged goods brands like Procter & Gamble.
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Amazon is becoming a formidable online advertising competitor to juggernauts Facebook and Google.

Advertising is Amazon's fastest-growing business. It's building ad formats like video, search and programmatic advertising that use shopping data to help advertisers target and measure ads, and is hiring for more than 1,300 positions to help grow the division, according to its website. Financial services firm Cowen predicted that Amazon would make $17.6 million from advertising this year, up 36% from 2019.

Business Insider asked advertising execs and experts that regularly work with Amazon who the top insiders are leading its advertising business. Most of the sources, whose identities are known to Business Insider, requested anonymity because of their close ties to Amazon.

We also scoured public information to find people working on everything from deepening relationships with marketers to solving measurement challenges. Our list reflects people working in a variety of roles and overseeing various parts of Amazon's ad products, from its core search ad business to newer initiatives like over-the-top advertising in Amazon Fire.

At the top of the advertising leadership is Paul Kotas, a longtime Amazon employee who is close to CEO Jeff Bezos' inner circle as a member of Amazon's executive suite, dubbed the "S-team." Under Kotas, Amazon has a big gap in its leadership since VP of global advertising and marketing Seth Dallaire left last year to become CRO of Instacart.

Here are the top 19 Amazon Advertising execs, listed alphabetically.