Amazon Merges Its DSP and Ads Console Into One Agent

Amazon Ads has merged its demand-side platform and its self-serve Ads Console into a single product called Amazon Ads Agent, and launched two campaign types inside it that let Amazon's AI decide where the money goes. The changes were set out at unBoxed 2026 in San Francisco on 29 September, in an unBoxed announcement covering nine product areas.

What Amazon Ads Agent Replaces

A demand-side platform, or DSP, is the software a buyer uses to bid on inventory outside the retailer's own pages. Amazon ran that separately from the Ads Console, the self-serve tool sellers use for sponsored ads. Amazon Ads Agent now holds both, with sponsored ads, Full-Funnel Campaigns and DVA+ connected in one platform.

"Amazon Ads Agent understands your end-to-end business, and all your advertising activity," said Paul Kotas, SVP of Amazon Ads. "You can ask questions, gain insights, consider detailed recommendations, or simply give instructions."

A conversational layer inside the platform is in expanded closed beta. Two things Amazon announced separately now live inside that layer. The generative display and video creative tools have moved into the conversation, and so has reporting: Amazon says nearly 1,000 metrics are reachable by natural-language question, returning business reviews with visualisations and peer benchmarks.

Where the Buyer Stops Choosing

Full-Funnel Campaigns is the format that carries the trade. The advertiser sets the products, the creative and the budget. Amazon's AI then handles the channel mix, the audiences and the optimisation, across sponsored ads, display, video, audio and streaming television, including third-party inventory on the open internet. Amazon has put numbers on it: the company says beta testers of Full-Funnel Campaigns saw 67% higher long-term return on ad spend and a 29% lower cost to acquire new-to-brand customers, figures drawn from its own closed beta rather than independent measurement.

What the advertiser gives up is selection. Amit Bhattacharyya, Amazon's vice president of agentic intelligence and models, told Digiday that buyers approve the creative but cannot pick individual channels or specific audiences, and that reporting is at format level rather than placement level. Amazon said it is still working out how to give advertisers more transparency on the audience side.

DVA+ is the less automated of the two. It folds Sponsored Display, Sponsored TV and programmatic display, video and audio into one campaign with one objective and one budget. A simplified mode leaves targeting to Amazon. An advanced mode keeps the conventional programmatic levers in place.

The transparency question has a legal backdrop. In August 2026 the Federal Trade Commission and 22 state attorneys general sued Amazon over alleged undisclosed surcharges in its ad auctions, which Amazon disputes.

The Surfaces Beyond Campaign Buying

Branded Conversations lets a brand supply the product guidance that Alexa for Shopping draws on, so a shopper who taps a prompt such as "Help me build a daily routine" gets that brand's framing of which product suits which need. It follows Amazon enabling purchases inside Alexa conversations in June.

Sponsored Services extends Amazon's closed loop to local service providers for the first time, putting installers and similar trades on the product page, with Yelp as the anchor partner for home and local services.

Two further releases are aimed at software rather than buyers. Amazon Ads MCP Server (Lite) exposes three core tools that an agent uses to discover and call the rest on demand, instead of loading the full toolset at once. The AMC Expert Tool turns a natural-language request into a query against Amazon Marketing Cloud schemas.

What Buyers Should Establish First

Google and Meta reached this point earlier. Google replaced Dynamic Search Ads with AI Max in April 2026 and extended it to Shopping campaigns in July, and Meta folded Advantage+ into default campaign creation in November 2025. Both automated a campaign type. Amazon has automated a level below that, collapsing two buying systems into one, which means the automation is now a property of the ad stack rather than a choice inside it.

That raises three things a buyer should establish before moving budget across. Whether the agent's decisions can be audited after the fact, rather than read as format-level totals. Whether third-party measurement still attaches to campaigns Amazon composes. And whether fees and supply sources stay visible now that the DSP and the console are one box. Amazon has published no general availability date or pricing for either Full-Funnel Campaigns or DVA+.