Summary
Amazon has launched Amazon Ads Agent at unBoxed 2026, a new advertising platform that puts agentic AI at the center of how ads are planned, built and managed. Instead of clicking through dashboards, marketers can describe what they want in plain language, and the AI will suggest actions and, where supported, carry them out. The platform brings Sponsored Ads, a new Full-Funnel Campaign type and DVA+ (display, video and audio) into one place, so one budget and one optimization engine can work across the whole customer journey. Amazon’s shopping and browsing data helps the AI understand buyer intent, and it can also help with audience targeting, media planning, performance analysis and even writing SQL queries for Amazon Marketing Cloud. Advanced users still keep their manual controls, and the new Amazon Ads MCP Server lets outside AI tools connect to the platform. DVA+ rolls out more widely from late October 2026. For sellers and agencies, this means campaign setup gets easier, so the real edge will come from strong products, good data and smart strategy rather than manual dashboard work.
Amazon has made one of its biggest advertising changes in years. At unBoxed 2026, it launched Amazon Ads Agent, a single platform that puts agentic AI at the center of how ads get planned, built, managed and improved.
The idea is simple. Instead of clicking through settings and dashboards, you tell the platform what you want, and the AI does a lot of the work. You still stay in control, though. Amazon isn’t trying to push marketers out. It’s trying to take the boring, repetitive stuff off their plate.
So, What Is Amazon Ads Agent?
It’s an AI-powered ad platform that you talk to in plain language. Amazon had already said it would merge its demand-side platform and ad console into one place. Now it has added an AI layer on top of that.
You can ask it things like:
- Find me new audiences
- How do I sell more of this product?
- Why is my campaign performing badly?
- Change my bids or budget
- Build me a media plan
It gives recommendations and, where supported, can actually make the changes. That’s what separates it from a regular chatbot. It doesn’t just answer questions. It helps get the work done.
Three Ad Types, One Place
Amazon has pulled three big areas together:
Sponsored Ads: The familiar formats that show up while shoppers are searching and comparing products.
Full-Funnel Campaigns: A new campaign type where the AI spreads your spend across the whole customer journey, so you don’t have to run separate campaigns for awareness, consideration and sales.
Display, Video and Audio (DVA+): A simpler way to run programmatic ads across streaming TV, online video, display and audio.
That’s a much wider setup than the old Sponsored Products-only world.
Why Agentic AI Matters Here
Old-style automation follows fixed rules. If conversion rate goes up, raise the bid. If performance drops, cut spend.
Agentic AI can handle a longer chain of tasks. It understands your goal, looks at the data, suggests what to do, and helps carry it out.
So instead of building audience segments by hand, you can just describe the customer you want. Instead of making five reports, you can ask, “Why did my sales drop this week?” and get a starting point right away. For day-to-day campaign work, that could save a lot of time.
Planning and Targeting by Chat
Media planning is also becoming conversational. You can ask the platform to estimate audience size, forecast reach, or suggest how to split your budget between channels. Normally, an agency team would need several reports and spreadsheets to answer questions like “How much should we put into video?”
Targeting works the same way. Say you type: “Find people who like premium home furniture and have been looking at interior design products.” The AI suggests product categories, keywords, Amazon audiences, shopping behaviors and other signals. You review them and decide what to use. The AI does the research, and you make the call.
Amazon’s Shopping Data Is a Big Advantage
Most ad platforms don’t see what people actually buy. Amazon does. It can learn from how people search, browse product pages, watch streaming content, compare items, add things to their basket and check out.
That helps the AI judge where someone is in their buying journey. Someone looking at five pairs of running shoes clearly has a different intent from someone casually reading fitness articles. The AI can use that gap to pick the right audience, format and message.
Full-Funnel Campaigns Make Things Simpler
Full-Funnel Campaigns are now live in the US. You only need to give a few inputs: your products, your budget, your goal, and an optional ROAS target.
From there, the AI runs ads across sponsored ads, display, video and streaming TV. It uses one budget and one optimization engine, and it moves money around depending on where it thinks growth is strongest.
This could fix a real headache. Right now, many advertisers run separate campaigns for awareness, retargeting, conversions, video, search and display. Keeping all of that in sync is hard work.
Amazon is also pushing new-to-brand customers. The reporting shows the usual numbers like impressions, clicks and sales, but also new customer growth and longer-term sales. So brands can judge their ads on how many new customers they win, not just on quick purchases.
DVA+ Takes the Pain Out of Programmatic
Programmatic advertising has always been complicated. It usually needs specialists to handle media buying, targeting, bidding, frequency caps, supply sources and deals.
With DVA+, you pick an objective, add your products and creatives, set a budget and launch. The AI manages delivery across streaming TV, online video, display, audio, Amazon’s own properties and the wider internet. Amazon says the broader rollout starts in late October 2026, with more markets to follow.
Experts Still Get Manual Controls
Amazon hasn’t taken away the advanced options. Experienced advertisers can still adjust targeting, inventory, supply sources, frequency caps, deals and bidding strategies.
So there are three ways to work. Let the AI do most of it, run everything manually, or mix both. This looks like where the industry is heading: AI-first campaign management, with humans able to step in whenever they want.
Ask Questions About Your Performance
Reporting is getting easier too. You can ask things like:
- Why did my conversion rate fall last week?
- Which campaigns brought in the most new customers?
- Where am I wasting budget?
- Which product category improved the most this month?
The AI looks at your data and gives you a structured answer, and it can even build visuals for you. That means fewer hours spent exporting data, building pivot tables and comparing dashboards.
Optimization Is Now Part of It
For Sponsored Products, the Ads Agent can suggest changes to targeting, bids and budgets. You review them and apply the ones you like. Amazon says advertisers who tried its earlier natural-language targeting recommendations saw better reach and efficiency on average, though results will differ from one campaign to another.
The takeaway is that AI is no longer just for reporting. It’s now taking part in running the campaigns.
AI for Amazon Marketing Cloud
Amazon has also added AI to Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC). One example is the AMC SQL Generator. You describe what you want, such as “customers who viewed a product in the last 30 days but didn’t buy,” and it writes the query for you. That opens up advanced analysis to marketers who don’t know SQL.
It’s one of the first expert tools available through the new Amazon Ads MCP Server.
Opening Up to Other AI Tools
The Amazon Ads MCP Server uses the Model Context Protocol so that outside AI tools can connect to Amazon Ads. Down the line, advertisers and agencies may be able to use their own AI agents to create campaigns, pull reports or finish multi-step tasks without opening Amazon’s interface.
For agencies and martech companies, this could be a big deal. It would let their in-house tools talk directly to Amazon’s ad systems.
First-Party Data Gets More Important
Amazon has also improved Ads Data Manager, which gives advertisers one place to connect and manage their first-party audience and conversion data.
This points to a bigger trend. AI is only as good as the data it learns from. Brands with strong first-party data on valuable customers, purchases, leads and behavior will give the AI better signals to work with. Good data could become a real edge.
What This Means for Amazon Sellers
Running ads may get easier, but the competition will probably get tougher. If every seller can use smart AI optimization, a clean campaign setup won’t make you stand out anymore.
What will matter more is:
- Product quality
- Product detail pages
- Pricing and reviews
- Creative assets
- Brand positioning
- Customer lifetime value
- Accurate conversion data
AI can improve your ads, but it can’t fix a weak product.
What This Means for Agencies
A lot of PPC work is repetitive, like adjusting bids, checking budgets, building reports, creating audiences and hunting for targeting ideas. If AI takes over these tasks, agencies will have to earn their fee in other ways: strategy, creative direction, customer research, measurement, profitability analysis, cross-channel planning and real business growth.
The performance marketer’s job may slowly shift from running campaigns to guiding AI with good strategy.
Amazon Is Going After the Full Funnel
Amazon used to be seen as a bottom-of-funnel platform. Someone searched, saw a sponsored listing and bought. That still matters, but Amazon now wants to reach people at every step, from awareness and discovery to purchase and repeat buying. It’s doing this through streaming TV, video, display, audio, sponsored ads and AI-led campaign management.
That puts it in more direct competition with the other big ad ecosystems.
The Bigger Shift
For years, marketers learned how to use ad dashboards. They learned the settings, the bidding strategies, the targeting options and the reports.
Agentic AI changes that. Instead of learning every setting, you tell the system what you want to achieve. The AI handles the execution, and you review what it does.
That doesn’t make marketing skills less important. If anything, strategy matters more now. Marketers will need to be sharper on questions like:
- What should we optimize for?
- Which customers matter most?
- What does profit really mean for us?
- Which products deserve more investment?
- What message will convince the customer?
- What data should the AI use?
These are business questions, not dashboard questions.
Final Thoughts
Amazon Ads Agent is a big step for digital advertising. Amazon isn’t just adding an AI assistant to its dashboard. It’s rebuilding a large part of the ad experience around agentic AI.
Sponsored ads, full-funnel campaigns and display, video and audio are all coming closer together. Natural-language control is getting stronger. AI can now help with audiences, optimization, media planning and analytics, and Amazon’s shopping data gives it extra insight. Marketers can choose full automation, manual control, or a mix.
The future of PPC and performance marketing may involve a lot less clicking through dashboards, and a lot more time steering smart systems toward the right business goals. Amazon Ads Agent is one of the clearest signs yet that this future is already here.
