On September 29, 2026, at its unBoxed event, Amazon introduced Amazon Ads Agent: a platform that merges its ads console and DSP into a single experience powered by agentic AI.
What happened
Amazon renamed its unified advertising platform «Amazon Ads Agent» and reorganized its offering into three campaign types. The core idea is that AI takes on more of the planning, execution and optimization, while the advertiser sets the goals.
Key facts
- Sponsored Ads: the existing product, which will gain conversational assistant features in the coming months.
- Full-Funnel Campaigns: sponsored ads, display, video and streaming TV in a single campaign. Already available to all US advertisers. Amazon’s AI handles planning, execution and optimization, and advertisers cannot select specific channels or audiences.
- DVA+ (Display, Video, Audio): combines Sponsored Display, Sponsored TV and programmatic campaigns. Rolling out from late October 2026 and keeping advanced manual controls.
- Conversational features: media planning, natural-language AI targeting, natural-language analytics and one-click Sponsored Products guidance. They arrive over the coming months, with no specific dates.
Amazon says advertisers who used natural-language targeting recommendations saw more than 25% additional unique customers and a cost per impression more than 10% lower. The announcement gives no sample size, timeframe or markets, so this figure should be read as a company claim, not an independently verified result.
Context
The move follows a clear trend in digital advertising: platforms are replacing granular controls with systems that optimize on their own. For advertisers that simplifies operations, but it also reduces visibility into which channel or audience drives each result. In Full-Funnel Campaigns, for example, the choice of channels and audiences sits with Amazon.
The fact that DVA+ keeps advanced manual controls suggests Amazon is trying to serve two profiles: those who want to delegate and those who want fine-grained control.
Strategic takeaway — Studio 24-7
When the platform decides more and more, the competitive edge stops being about pushing buttons and becomes about what we feed the system: clear objectives, well-measured first-party data, strong creative and an offer that converts. An automated media-buying AI optimizes what it is asked to; if the objective is poorly defined or measurement is weak, it optimizes the wrong thing, only faster.
For a business, this reinforces our philosophy: systems before improvisation. Before handing budget to an automated campaign, define your acceptable acquisition cost, set up conversion tracking and decide how you will evaluate results outside the platform’s own reporting. Without that system, you depend on the metrics the platform chooses to show.
Sources
- Relevant Audience — Amazon Ads renames its unified platform Amazon Ads Agent at unBoxed 2026 (September 30, 2026)