A leak pitch deck obtained by AdWeek and shared with advertisers earlier this month provides new details about how Amazon plans to sell ads on Rufus, its AI‑powered shopping assistant. The internal presentation shows that Sponsored Ads in Rufus will no longer be free as they roll out to more advertisers and that charges will be based on cost per click.
The deck says Amazon is moving the feature out of open beta. At that point, advertisers will start paying when users click Rufus ad units. Amazon confirmed the deck did originate from the company but did not disclose specific pricing or a firm launch date beyond saying it plans to release the ads “soon.”
How Rufus ads have appeared so far
Sponsored ads first started showing up in the Rufus experience during early tests. Amazon’s own product updates in 2024 indicated that its core Sponsored Ads formats could begin appearing inside the AI assistant based on search and conversational context, though at that time the placements were still in a testing phase and not fully paid offerings.
Follow‑up reporting noted that these placements were experimental, visible in limited contexts, and often blended with AI‑generated prompts drawn from a product’s listing content, reviews, and Brand Posts.
Pricing and measurement, according to the deck
What the leaked pitch deck adds is a specific direction on pricing and measurement. Amazon’s material shared with buyers mentions that, amid the transition from open beta to a broader launch, advertisers will begin paying cost per click for ad placements in Rufus. They will also be able to see CPC cost data and performance metrics in Amazon’s ads console. However, the deck did not share detailed pricing tiers or exact availability dates.
The internal deck makes three headline arguments for advertisers. Amazon reports 250 million active Rufus users in 2025. Rufus users are said to be 60% more likely to complete a purchase than those who do not interact with the AI assistant. And because Sponsored Ads run under existing campaign infrastructure, Amazon frames them as a low-friction extension of active retail media spend rather than a new line item.
The 60% purchase-completion figure is Amazon's own claim and has not been independently verified. It is also unclear whether the figure reflects Sponsored Ads specifically or Rufus interactions broadly. Amazon has not published click-through rate benchmarks or attribution data from the open beta period, leaving early advertisers without the performance baselines that typically inform Sponsored Ads scaling decisions.
What Rufus advertising means for marketers
Rufus is part of Amazon’s broader push into AI‑driven commerce. The assistant answers questions and helps users find products within the Amazon shopping experience. The leaked pitch deck describes Rufus as a “virtual product expert” that places Sponsored Ads within conversational interactions with shoppers.
This approach is different from traditional search or display advertising because ads can appear as part of an interactive dialogue with a shopper. For advertisers and brands, this could change where and how ad placements show up across the AI assistant interface. Marketers who have previously worked with Sponsored Ads on Amazon’s retail search placements might see this as a new placement type that links advertising more directly with conversational product discovery.
Competitive Context
Amazon is entering a field where other major platforms have already established AI-native ad inventory. Walmart launched sponsored placements inside Sparky and integrated a shopping app with ChatGPT. Microsoft Copilot embeds paid placements in conversation responses. OpenAI expanded ChatGPT's commerce capabilities through a PayPal partnership.
Amazon's structural advantage in this space is purchase intent. Rufus users arrive inside a shopping context, unlike general-purpose AI assistants where product queries compete with non-commercial interactions. That intent concentration is the central argument in Amazon's pitch to advertisers, and the same logic that established Sponsored Products as the dominant retail media format of the past decade.
Performance Risks
Amazon has not released click-through rate benchmarks, cost-per-acquisition data, or attribution methodology from the open beta. Consumer research indicates a substantial share of shoppers abandon AI-assisted searches when recommendations fail to match their intent. This creates a relevance risk specific to conversational ad formats: if the AI's product recommendations diverge from the sponsored ad mix, performance metrics will underperform the pitch deck figures. Until Amazon publishes data from the open beta, early advertisers have no independent benchmark to test against.
Recap
When did Amazon introduce advertising to Rufus?
Amazon introduced Sponsored Ads to Rufus in 2024. More recently, Sponsored Products Prompts and Sponsored Brands Prompts, conversational ad units designed for Rufus's natural language interface, went generally available in the U.S. on March 25, 2026, after an open beta that began in November 2025.
What does Amazon's pitch deck claim about Rufus performance?
According to the deck obtained by Adweek, Amazon cites 250 million active Rufus users and says Rufus users are 60% more likely to complete a purchase than non-Rufus shoppers. Amazon has not published independent benchmark data from the open beta period, and it is unclear whether the 60% figure applies to Sponsored Prompts specifically or to Rufus interactions broadly.
How do Amazon Rufus ads compare to other AI shopping ad surfaces?
Walmart has launched sponsored placements inside Sparky and integrated a shopping app with ChatGPT. Microsoft Copilot embeds paid placements in conversation responses, and OpenAI expanded ChatGPT's commerce capabilities through a PayPal partnership. Amazon's structural advantage is purchase intent: Rufus users arrive already inside a shopping context, unlike general-purpose AI assistants.
