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Amazon buries its ad console and hands the keys to an AI agent

Full-Funnel Campaigns opens Amazon's full ad stack — sponsored search through streaming TV — to any U.S. seller with a $100 daily budget.

By Iris Holloway·Tools & frameworks·

Amazon has retired the Ads Console and the Amazon DSP interface in favor of a single surface called Amazon Ads Agent, unveiled at unBoxed 2026 in San Francisco on September 29. The headline product, Full-Funnel Campaigns, folds Sponsored Products, display, video, and streaming TV into one AI-run buy that any U.S. advertiser can access at a $100-per-day minimum, per MediaPost. DVA+, which collapses what used to live under Sponsored Display, Sponsored TV, and programmatic, begins rolling out in late October.

The pitch is that the seller supplies budget, products, and creative; Amazon’s AI plans, executes, and continuously re-optimizes across formats, pulling on what the company describes as “trillions of shopping, browsing, and streaming signals.” Kelly MacLean, VP of engineering, science, and product at Amazon Ads, frames the shift as “human-led AI supported,” and says “Rapid advancements in AI are allowing us to deliver better advertising with improved performance across all channels and customer objectives.” DVA+, she says, is about “bringing the power of programmatic advertising to all advertisers.”

That’s the democratization story. The control story is thinner. Per Digiday, Full-Funnel advertisers approve creative but can’t pick channels or audiences, and Amit Bhattacharyya, VP of full-funnel products, AI & modeling, concedes: “We are figuring out how to give them more transparency on the audience side.” Amazon also declined to commit to disclosing how winning auction prices get set, a notable omission given the August FTC lawsuit, joined by 22 state attorneys general, alleging undisclosed Sponsored Products surcharges, which Amazon disputes.

Amazon cites a 25%+ unique-customer lift and a 10%+ CPM reduction from last year’s natural-language targeting. The broader pattern is unmissable: see also Yext’s Flamel acquisition routing ChatGPT ad spend to conversion gaps and Kargo’s Karlo opening cross-channel buys to smaller businesses. The small seller gets DSP-level reach. The platform gets the dials.

Sources