The number
Amazon’s advertising unit booked $19.64 billion in Q3, up 12% year over year, making it one of the fastest-growing parts of a $201.9 billion quarter. The sequential comparison dips about 0.9% from Q2’s $19.81 billion, but the context matters: Prime Day fell in Q2 this year rather than Q3, pulling ad budgets forward. Amazon expects advertising revenue to grow in the high teens in Q4 2026, even as it guides total revenue to between $240 billion and $247 billion.
The new buyer is an agent
At unBoxed, Amazon showed the consolidation behind that growth story. Amazon Ads Agent brings sponsored advertising, display, video and audio into a single buying experience, building on the earlier integration of its demand-side platform and advertising console. Advertisers can use natural-language briefs to plan campaigns, generate creative, forecast reach, adjust budgets and analyse performance—and the system can recommend and execute optimizations.
Two packages anchor the pitch:
- Full-Funnel Campaigns combine sponsored ads, display, video and streaming TV in one campaign. Advertisers supply products, creative and budget; Amazon’s AI controls how the campaign runs and optimizes toward goals such as new-to-brand customers. Beta tests claim up to 67% higher return on long-term ad spend and 29% lower cost per new-to-brand customer than manually configured campaigns.
- DVA+ consolidates sponsored display, sponsored TV and programmatic display, video and audio buying. Marketers can pick an objective, budget and creative and let Amazon handle targeting and optimization—or use advanced settings to keep DSP controls.
Why it matters
The strategic play is clear: simplify programmatic enough for smaller advertisers without specialist teams, and Amazon can expand adoption of its ad infrastructure. It also gives Amazon another chance to capture budgets that used to sit with separate agency teams and buying platforms.
Trust is the open variable
The launch lands alongside the FTC’s August lawsuit, filed with 22 state attorneys general, alleging Amazon secretly introduced surcharges so that Sponsored Products advertisers paid their own winning bids about 80% of the time by 2024 despite second-price auction claims. Amazon says it strongly disagrees and the case remains unproven.
That context makes automation feel like both a productivity gift and a governance problem. Digiday’s sources raised the buyer-beware questions: can advertisers inspect and challenge AI-made decisions? Can independent measurement verify performance? Do fees, inventory sources and auction mechanics stay visible as buying becomes automated?
Amazon’s answer is partial. Kelly MacLean, vp of Amazon’s demand-side platform, says DVA+ keeps advertisers in charge of objectives, products, creative approval, budgets, pacing, flight dates and location targeting—and advanced settings retain bidding, audience, supply and frequency controls. Amit Bhattacharyya, vp of full-funnel products, AI and modeling, notes that full-funnel campaigns don’t yet let advertisers pick channels or audiences, though format-level reporting is available.
A framework for the buy-side
Alex Brownstein, founder of AHB Advisors, frames agent transparency in five layers: data, decisions, pricing, delivery and results. He advises advertisers to bring their own customer data and run independent incrementality tests to judge whether Amazon’s reported performance creates additional sales. Marketing Accountability Council co-founder Jay Mandel puts the sharper question: if spending less with Amazon is better for the advertiser, will its agent recommend that?
Advertisers would be wise to treat automation as an accelerator, not an auditor. Keep budget authority, demand format- and publisher-level reporting, and validate outcomes outside the platform before scaling.
Source: Digiday
