Amazon Ads Agent is the new name for Amazon’s advertising platform, and it merges the Amazon Ads Console with Amazon DSP into a single place to buy every Amazon ad format. Amazon announced it at unBoxed on 29 September 2026, replacing a console that had run for 14 years.
The change is bigger than a rename. Campaign types have been reorganised, a conversational layer now sits on top of the whole platform, and a new campaign format asks you to hand channel mix, creative and audience choices to Amazon’s AI. If you run Sponsored Products, Sponsored Display, Sponsored TV or programmatic, your working day changes.
Here is what actually shipped, what you can use today, and the three questions worth answering before you move budget into it.
Key takeaways
- Amazon Ads Console and Amazon DSP are now one platform called Amazon Ads Agent, announced 29 September 2026.
- Everything collapses into three campaign types: Sponsored Ads, DVA+, and Full-Funnel Campaigns.
- Full-Funnel Campaigns take one goal and one budget, then decide channel mix, creative and audiences for you.
- DVA+ replaces separate Sponsored Display, Sponsored TV and programmatic setups, and keeps advanced settings for manual buyers.
- Amazon says existing campaigns, audiences and creatives carry over automatically, with the same inventory.
- Amazon’s headline performance numbers come from its own beta advertisers, so treat them as claims to test, not benchmarks to plan against.
What is Amazon Ads Agent?
Amazon Ads Agent is Amazon’s single advertising platform, combining the former Ads Console and Amazon DSP into one media buying experience with a conversational AI layer. It covers sponsored ads, display, video, streaming TV and audio in one place, and is available to advertisers of all sizes across more than 20 marketplaces.
Before this, buying Amazon ads meant two separate tools. The Ads Console handled Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display, and was where most sellers lived. Amazon DSP was a different interface for programmatic display and video, usually run by agencies or larger brands, often with a minimum spend attached.
Those two are now one. According to the Amazon Ads Agent announcement, Amazon Ads Agent is “the new name of the unified platform, now powered by agentic AI”. The Amazon DSP product page puts it more bluntly, saying Amazon DSP “has evolved into Amazon Ads Agent”.
The conversational part is what gives the product its name. Instead of building an audience through dropdown menus, you describe who you want in plain language. Instead of exporting a report and pivoting it, you ask a question about performance. Amazon says this layer covers media planning with audience sizing and budget recommendations, targeting by description, performance diagnostics and Sponsored Products optimisation guidance.
What actually changed on 29 September?
Three things. The two buying interfaces merged into one. Campaign types were reorganised from a long list of separate products into three: Sponsored Ads, DVA+, and Full-Funnel Campaigns. And a conversational AI layer was added across planning, targeting, creative and reporting, currently in expanded closed beta.
The campaign restructure is the part that changes your daily work. Here is how the old products map onto the new structure.
| What you ran before | Where it lives now | What changes |
|---|---|---|
| Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands | Sponsored Ads | Largely familiar, with AI optimisation guidance added |
| Sponsored Display | DVA+ | Merged with TV and programmatic into one campaign |
| Sponsored TV | DVA+ | No longer a separate campaign setup |
| Amazon DSP programmatic | DVA+ advanced settings | Manual control retained, but inside the new campaign |
| Running each of the above separately | Full-Funnel Campaigns | New option: one goal, one budget, AI decides the split |
Amazon also announced several things around the platform at the same event, listed in its unBoxed 2026 announcements: Branded Conversations, which lets brands hold multi-turn conversations with shoppers on Alexa; Sponsored Services, which extends Amazon advertising to local service providers with Yelp as anchor partner; an Amazon Ads MCP Server (Lite) for connecting outside agents; and an AMC Expert Tool that turns plain language questions into SQL queries.
What are Full-Funnel Campaigns and do the numbers hold up?
Full-Funnel Campaigns take one objective and one budget, then let Amazon’s AI choose the channel mix, creative, audiences and optimisation across sponsored ads, display, video, streaming TV and audio. Amazon reports beta advertisers saw 67% higher long-term return on ad spend and 29% lower new-to-brand acquisition costs.
This is the most automated thing Amazon has shipped for advertisers. You stop deciding how much goes to display versus streaming TV. You stop building separate creative for each format, because the platform generates display images and video from your existing product assets. You set a goal and the system allocates.
The reported results are genuinely strong. Alongside the 67% and 29% figures, Amazon cites a brand called Canine Naturals reaching 41% new-to-brand sales, and says advertisers using natural language targeting recommendations saw more than 25% additional unique customers while lowering cost per impression by more than 10%. Its AI creative tools are credited with up to 71% more product coverage and up to 15% sales growth.
Read those numbers carefully, though. Every one of them comes from Amazon, measuring advertisers Amazon selected, inside a beta Amazon ran. There is no independent verification, no published methodology and no sample size. That does not make them false. It makes them claims to test in your own account rather than planning assumptions.
There is also a structural point worth sitting with. Automation that optimises toward Amazon’s objective is not automatically optimising toward your margin. A campaign that grows total sales while quietly moving spend to lower-margin products can report a healthy return and still leave you worse off. If you do not know your contribution margin by product, automated allocation is a bet rather than a decision. Our guide to Amazon PPC for beginners covers how to work that number out.
What is DVA+ and what control do you keep?
DVA+ stands for Display, Video and Audio. It replaces separate Sponsored Display, Sponsored TV and programmatic setups with a single campaign carrying one objective and one budget. It offers two optimisation modes, Brand+ and Performance+, and keeps advanced settings so experienced programmatic buyers retain manual control.
DVA+ is the middle ground between the familiar Sponsored Ads world and the fully automated Full-Funnel Campaigns. Amazon says a campaign can be launched in minutes, with the AI placing ads across streaming TV, online video, display and audio.
The important detail for anyone who previously lived in Amazon DSP is that advanced settings survived. Amazon’s DSP page states that existing DSP capabilities are accessible through DVA+ with advanced settings, and that you keep the same inventory, the same audience signals and the same reporting, including Prime Video, Twitch, Fire TV and third-party publishers.
| Decision | Sponsored Ads | DVA+ | Full-Funnel Campaigns |
|---|---|---|---|
| Budget split across channels | You | Amazon, within one channel group | Amazon |
| Audience selection | You | You, in advanced settings | Amazon |
| Creative | You | You or AI generated | AI generated by default |
| Placement control | Partial | Yes, in advanced settings | No |
| Bid control | Yes | Yes, in advanced settings | No |
If you have spent years building audience segments and placement exclusions, that work is not wasted. It now sits one layer deeper in the interface. If you are a seller who never used DSP because of its complexity or spend minimums, DVA+ is the first time streaming TV inventory sits in the same campaign builder as your Sponsored Products.
What happens to your existing campaigns?
Amazon says campaigns, audiences, creatives and reporting transfer automatically, with no action needed from you, and that the same inventory and audience signals remain available. Amazon has not published general availability dates or end-of-life dates for the legacy interfaces, so the safest approach is to verify what your own account shows.
This is the question most sellers asked first, and the answer is reassuring on paper. Nothing is being deleted from under you. The campaign structures you have built continue to run.
What Amazon has not published is a migration timetable. MediaPost reported the merger as the result of a year-long initiative, but noted no specific end-of-life dates for the legacy systems. That absence is worth planning around rather than ignoring. Anything built on the assumption that the old console will exist in its current form a year from now carries some risk, including internal documentation, agency onboarding material and reporting that scrapes screens rather than pulling from an API.
How much of this can you actually use today?
Less than the announcement suggests. Amazon says Full-Funnel Campaigns are available now in the United States, DVA+ is due to roll out from late October, and the conversational layer is in expanded closed beta, with further features arriving over subsequent months. Availability varies by account, so check yours directly.
| Feature | Status as announced | What to do now |
|---|---|---|
| Full-Funnel Campaigns | Available, United States | Design a test with a budget cap before enabling |
| DVA+ | Due from late October | Map your existing Display and TV campaigns onto it |
| Conversational layer | Expanded closed beta | Request access, do not build process around it yet |
| AI creative tools | Live | Generate variants, review before they run |
| Measurement by natural language | Within Amazon Ads Agent | Spot check against your existing reports |
A keynote describes a roadmap. Your account describes your reality. Log in and look before you plan a quarter around any of this.
What should you check before moving budget?
Three things: whether the agent’s decisions can be audited after the fact rather than only read as channel totals, whether your third-party measurement still works on Amazon-composed campaigns, and whether fees and supply sources stay visible now that the systems are unified. Get answers before shifting meaningful spend.
These questions matter more than usual because of what else happened this year. On 31 August 2026, the FTC press release announced that the FTC and 22 states had sued Amazon, alleging it added a hidden surcharge to its ad auctions from 2019, turning what advertisers understood as second-price auctions into something closer to first-price. The complaint alleges the scheme extracted tens of billions of dollars from more than one million brands and sellers, and that the share of Sponsored Products auctions where advertisers paid their own full bid rose from between 30% and 40% in 2021 to roughly 80% in 2024. Amazon disputes the allegations and the case has not been decided.
Nothing about that case has been proven. But it concerns precisely the mechanism the new platform asks you to trust more of, which is how prices get set inside an auction you cannot see. Asking for auditability is not cynicism here, it is ordinary diligence. If you plan media across channels, the same logic you would apply to any black box applies here, and our digital media planning glossary covers the programmatic terms worth knowing before those conversations.
A worked example: should you hand over a month of budget?
Run a holdout rather than a switch. Move a fixed slice of spend into the automated campaign, keep the rest running as it is, and compare new-to-brand cost and total sales after four weeks. A test that cannot fail cleanly is not a test, it is a migration with extra steps.
Example. Say you spend $12,000 a month on Amazon ads, split like this:
- Sponsored Products: $8,000
- Sponsored Display: $2,500
- Sponsored TV: $1,500
On the Sponsored Products side, at a $1.25 cost per click that $8,000 buys 6,400 clicks. At a 10% conversion rate that is 640 orders, and at a $38 average order value that is $24,320 in sales.
Formula: ACOS = Ad spend ÷ Ad sales × 100
So your ACOS is 8,000 ÷ 24,320 × 100, which is 32.9%. Your return on ad spend is 3.04.
Now take the $4,000 sitting in Display and TV. Say your new-to-brand acquisition cost there is $42 today, so that $4,000 brings in 95 new-to-brand customers. If Amazon’s reported 29% reduction held in your account, your cost would fall to $29.82 and the same $4,000 would bring 134 customers. That is 39 extra customers a month for the same spend.
That is the prize. Here is the test that tells you whether it is real for you.
| Step | What to do | Why |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Record your current new-to-brand cost and ACOS for 4 weeks | You cannot measure a change without a baseline |
| 2 | Move $3,000 of the $4,000 into the automated campaign | Enough to learn, small enough to absorb |
| 3 | Leave $1,000 running exactly as before | Your control group |
| 4 | Hold both for 4 full weeks without touching settings | Automated systems need a learning period |
| 5 | Compare new-to-brand cost, total sales and margin, not just ROAS | ROAS can rise while profit falls |
If new-to-brand cost drops and your margin holds, scale. If sales rise but margin falls, the automation is buying growth with your profit and you should keep manual control. Our free Amazon seller tools include an FBA profit calculator you can use to check the margin side of that question, and the 2026 FBA fee tables cover the referral and fulfilment costs that sit underneath it.
What this means for marketers and creators
What this means for marketers and creators
For marketers and sellers: the skill that pays has moved. Manual bid tuning matters less when the system sets bids. What matters more is knowing your true margin by product, designing clean tests, and reading reports critically. Budget your time toward measurement and product economics rather than keyword housekeeping. If you manage programmatic, learn where advanced settings now live in DVA+ before your next flight.
For creators: two things. First, if you sell physical products, streaming TV inventory is now reachable from the same campaign builder as your Sponsored Products, without the old DSP barrier. Second, Branded Conversations means your product detail page copy now feeds how Alexa describes your brand out loud. Clear, specific, factual product copy is becoming the input to an AI answer rather than just a page people read.
Common mistakes to avoid
- Treating Amazon’s beta figures as benchmarks. They come from selected advertisers in Amazon’s own test. Use them as a reason to run a test, not as a forecast.
- Switching everything at once. Without a control group you will never know whether a change in results came from the platform or from seasonality.
- Judging automation on ROAS alone. ROAS ignores margin. A campaign can lift ROAS while shifting sales to your least profitable products.
- Assuming advanced settings are gone. They are not, they moved. Find them in DVA+ before concluding you have lost control.
- Planning a quarter off the keynote. Several features are in beta or rolling out. Check what is live in your account first.
- Letting AI generate creative unreviewed. Generated video and display pulls from your existing assets, and asset quality varies. Look at every variant before it runs.
How does this compare with what other platforms are doing?
Amazon is following the same path as Google Performance Max and Meta Advantage+: fewer campaign types, fewer manual levers, one goal handed to an optimiser. What makes Amazon’s version different is that it also owns the retail data and the inventory, so the system optimising your spend also sells the product.
That combination is the genuinely new part. Google and Meta automate against signals they observe. Amazon automates against purchase data it owns, on inventory it controls, in auctions it runs. For advertisers that can mean better targeting than either competitor offers. It also means fewer independent reference points when you want to check the result.
The practical response is the same one that worked when Performance Max arrived: keep a manual control group running for longer than feels necessary, and keep at least one measurement source the platform does not provide. If you want a refresher on the cost metrics underneath all of this, our guide to CPM, CPC, CPA, CPL and CPV covers how they relate, and our piece on buying ChatGPT ads through Amazon DSP covers the other direction Amazon has been pushing this year.
Frequently asked questions
What is Amazon Ads Agent?
Amazon Ads Agent is the new name for Amazon’s single advertising platform. It merges the Amazon Ads Console and Amazon DSP into one place, adds a conversational layer you can type instructions into, and reorganises everything into three campaign types: Sponsored Ads, DVA+, and Full-Funnel Campaigns. Amazon announced it at unBoxed on 29 September 2026.
Is Amazon DSP being shut down?
Not shut down, renamed and absorbed. Amazon’s own DSP page says the product has evolved into Amazon Ads Agent, and that programmatic buying now runs through DVA+ with advanced settings. Amazon says campaigns, audiences, creatives and reporting carry over without you doing anything, and the same inventory remains available.
What are Full-Funnel Campaigns?
Full-Funnel Campaigns let you set one goal and one budget, then hand channel mix, creative, audience selection and optimisation to Amazon’s AI across sponsored ads, display, video, streaming TV and audio. Amazon reports beta advertisers saw 67% higher long-term return on ad spend and 29% lower new-to-brand acquisition costs.
What is DVA+ on Amazon Ads?
DVA+ stands for Display, Video and Audio. It replaces separate Sponsored Display, Sponsored TV and programmatic campaign setups with one campaign carrying a single objective and budget. It offers Brand+ and Performance+ optimisation modes, and keeps advanced settings for buyers who want manual control.
Can I still control targeting and placements?
Partly. DVA+ keeps advanced settings for experienced programmatic buyers, so manual targeting has not disappeared. Full-Funnel Campaigns are the opposite: you set the goal and Amazon decides the rest. The practical answer is that control now depends on which campaign type you pick.
Is Amazon Ads Agent available to everyone yet?
Not entirely. Amazon says Full-Funnel Campaigns are available now in the United States, DVA+ is due to roll out from late October, and the conversational layer is in expanded closed beta with further features arriving over following months. Check your own account rather than assuming the keynote reflects what you can use.
Should I move my whole budget to automated campaigns?
No. Test with a slice first. Amazon’s performance figures come from its own selected beta advertisers, not from independent measurement. Move a fixed percentage for four weeks, hold the rest as a control, and compare new-to-brand cost and total sales before shifting more.
Why does the FTC lawsuit matter here?
The FTC and 22 states sued Amazon on 31 August 2026, alleging a hidden surcharge in its ad auctions. Amazon disputes the claims. It matters because the new platform asks you to trust its automated bidding decisions, and the case concerns exactly how those auction prices were set.
Next steps: log into your Amazon Ads account and check which of these three campaign types you can actually see today, then write down your current new-to-brand cost before you change anything. Without that number the test above cannot tell you anything. If you want to check the margin side first, start with our free Amazon seller tools.
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