At its flagship unBoxed conference, Amazon Ads collapses buying silos as AI takes a bigger role in media decisions

The Amazon Effect // September 30, 2026 At its flagship unBoxed conference, Amazon Ads collapses buying silos as AI takes a bigger role in media decisions By Ronan Shields Ivy Liu This story was originally published on Modern Retail’s sister site, Digiday.

Amazon’s dominance in retail media budgets is hardly a surprise, with Madison Avenue observers expecting a push to win similar spend in adland. And at its flagship advertising and marketing conference, hosted this week in San Francisco, California, Amazon unveiled its latest offerings.

However, as allegations from government authorities around auction practices continue to dog certain aspects of its media operations, market observers advise caution when it comes to accepting the advertising and retail media giant’s claims lock, stock and barrel.

The company has renamed its unified platform Amazon Ads Agent, with further product launches unveiled today (Sept. 29), including Full-Funnel Campaigns, which combines sponsored ads, display, video and streaming TV within a single campaign.

Here, advertisers specify the products, creative, and budget they want to form their campaign, while Amazon’s AI determines execution and continuously optimizes toward outcomes including new-to-brand customers and its long-term sales metric. Meanwhile, DVA+ consolidates Sponsored Display, Sponsored TV and programmatic display, video and audio buying.

Its simplified mode lets advertisers select an objective, budget and creative while Amazon handles targeting and optimization; experienced buyers can switch to advanced settings and retain control over targeting, deals, supply sources, frequency and bidding.

Amazon Ads Agent becomes the connective tissue Per some observers, the announcements amount to Amazon collapsing previously separate advertising workflows, such as its demand-side platform and Sponsored Ads units, while giving its AI considerably greater responsibility for how media budgets are planned and deployed — making advertiser control, transparency and the rationale behind automated decisions important questions surrounding the rollout.

Behind the individual launches is a wider overhaul of how Amazon wants advertisers to use its ad stack. Furthermore, Amazon is expanding what began as a conversational interface into an AI layer spanning planning, campaign creation, optimization, measurement, and support.

In practice, this amounts to Amazon moving AI from being a feature within its buying tools to a more central role in how advertisers operate them. DVA+ brings programmatic buying to a wider base DVA+ is one of the clearest examples.

It brings capabilities previously spread across Sponsored Display, Sponsored TV and programmatic campaigns into one buying experience. Rather than requiring every advertiser to operate something resembling a conventional DSP, Amazon lets buyers select an objective, provide a budget and creative, and hand much of the execution to its technology.

Kelly MacLean, vp at Amazon Ads, described the approach as “bringing the power of programmatic advertising to all advertisers,” in conversation with Digiday, further characterizing the development as “human-led AI supported.” For Amazon, this also expands the pool of advertisers that can use its programmatic infrastructure.

Smaller businesses without dedicated programmatic teams can use the simplified workflow, while agencies and enterprise buyers can open advanced settings and retain controls over targeting, supply sources, deals, frequency caps and bidding. The setup is designed to accommodate both groups without forcing larger buyers into the automated experience.

MacLean further described the advanced configuration as letting advertisers retain control over objectives, products, creative approval, budgets, pacing, flight dates, and location targeting, while the platform optimizes for achieving those goals.

Full-Funnel Campaigns pushes further into automated media buying For some, Full-Funnel Campaigns takes that approach a step further, with the product doing more than simplify programmatic execution by removing operational boundaries between Amazon’s upper- and lower-funnel advertising products.

Amit Bhattacharyya, vp, full-funnel products, AI & modeling at Amazon Ads, told Digiday that advertisers were already attempting to connect Sponsored Ads and DVA campaigns themselves, requiring separate campaign setups and leaving buyers to work out how the different pieces should interact.

“What if we made it really simple, and yet very powerful for advertising?” he said, explaining Amazon’s rationale for building the product. Full-Funnel Campaigns moves more of those decisions to Amazon.

The system can run activity across sponsored advertising and display, video and audio — including third-party open-internet inventory — while optimizing toward metrics such as new-to-brand customers and Long-Term Sales. But buye