Amazon has renamed and rebuilt its ad platform, announcing the changes at its unBoxed conference in San Francisco today. The unified buying platform, which Adweek describes as replacing the long-standing Amazon Ad Console, is now called Amazon Ads Agent, with agentic AI running through it.
Kelly MacLean, Amazon Ads VP of engineering, science and product, told Adweek it's more than a rebrand, saying agents are built into the workflows rather than sitting in a chat box on the side. Advertisers can still build campaigns by hand, hand the job to Amazon's AI or mix the two. Amazon says new chat features covering media planning and analytics will roll out over the coming months.
The bigger story for brands is Branded Conversations. It builds on Sponsored Brands prompts inside Alexa for Shopping. Until now, when a shopper tapped a prompt, Alexa built its answer from the brand's product pages, Brand Store and campaign data. Now brands can feed in their own expertise, such as which product suits which customer and what to buy alongside it. The ads will be labelled as Sponsored and launch in the US in January 2027. Amazon hasn't said when, or whether, it will come to the UK.
Why it matters: retail media is moving from dashboards to agents, and the biggest player just said so out loud. Branded Conversations goes further. It's paid influence over what an AI shopping assistant tells people at the point of purchase. Great for brands with deep pockets. Shoppers' trust in those answers is the thing to watch.
Sources: Adweek on Amazon Ads Agent, Adweek on Branded Conversations, and Amazon Ads' own announcements on Amazon Ads Agent and Branded Conversations.