Amazon adds AI-run ad campaigns, with broader buying tools arriving later

Amazon is offering advertisers a campaign that its AI plans, runs and continuously optimizes—not just a chat assistant. But the broader automation package announced at unBoxed on September 29, 2026, has a staggered release: Full-Funnel Campaigns is available in the United States, while DVA+ and new conversational capabilities are still to come.

Amazon Ads Agent is the new name for the company’s unified advertising platform. It brings together sponsored ads, Full-Funnel Campaigns, and Display, Video and Audio campaigns. The underlying consolidation began with last year’s announcement that Amazon would combine its demand-side platform, used for automated ad buying, with its ads console.

One campaign from discovery to purchase

Full-Funnel Campaigns combines sponsored ads, display, video and streaming TV in one campaign. Advertisers supply their budget, products and creative assets; Amazon says its AI handles planning, execution and ongoing optimization. The company says signals shared across formats help connect advertising that introduces a brand with ads aimed at driving purchases.

Built-in creative tools can generate video and display images from existing product pages. Advertisers approve those assets before launch. Reporting combines impressions, clicks and sales with measures of customers new to the brand and long-term sales, giving buyers a single performance view across formats.

DVA+ keeps a route to manual buying

DVA+ combines buying previously handled through Sponsored Display, Sponsored TV and programmatic campaigns—automated purchases of advertising space. Advertisers choose sales, traffic or awareness as their goal, add products and creative assets, and set a budget. Amazon says the system then places ads across streaming TV, online video, display and audio, on Amazon properties and the open internet.

Its Brand+ component seeks audiences likely to take actions such as visiting a Brand Store or adding products to a cart. Performance+ targets customers actively in the market and optimizes for the chosen outcome. Amazon says these components draw on trillions of shopping, browsing and streaming signals.

Automation is not the only buying mode. DVA+ retains advanced settings for targeting, deals, ad supply sources, bidding strategies and frequency caps, which limit how often an ad appears. Across Ads Agent, advertisers can use manual campaign tools, AI optimization or a mixture of both.

Chat moves beyond isolated tasks

The planned conversational additions cover four parts of campaign work:

• Media planning: estimate audience size, forecast reach, recommend budget allocations and compare the additional reach different channels could provide.
• Targeting: turn plain-language audience descriptions into recommendations for products, categories, keywords and Amazon audiences.
• Analytics: answer performance questions, diagnose trends, compare results with peers and build visual analyses across campaign types.
• Sponsored Products guidance: suggest targeting, bid and budget changes that advertisers can apply in one click.

In Amazon’s announcement, Jason O’Toole, dentsu’s executive vice president and head of commerce and retail media, described a change in agency work. He said the conversational experience lets teams make human-informed optimizations directly, spending less time on campaign setup and execution mechanics and more on insights and creative thinking.

Amazon’s performance figures concern its earlier conversational targeting experience, not the entire new package. The company says advertisers applying targeting recommendations through natural language reached more than 25% additional unique customers while lowering average cost per impression by more than 10%. Those are company-reported results for that workflow, not a demonstrated outcome for every newly announced capability.