Amazon's ad business generated nearly $20 billion in Q2 2026 revenue, beating analyst estimates — and the company now wants to keep that growth coming by collapsing its advertising stack into a single AI-driven entry point.

At its UnBoxed conference on Sept. 29, Amazon announced that the unified platform combining its demand-side platform and ads console is now named Amazon Ads Agent. The platform brings sponsored ads, display, video and audio together in one place, with an updated chat experience that assists advertisers at every step.

"How do we provide more of the capabilities and access to the trillions of signals that we have for marketers who are trying to reach people where they are in their advertising journey?" said Kelly MacLean, vice president at Amazon Ads, in an interview. "How do we continue to just make it easy? How do we drive radical simplification in the way that marketers want to work with us?"

Full-funnel campaigns go wide

Amazon Ads Agent supports three campaign types, including its bedrock sponsored product ad. Full-funnel campaigns, previewed at last year's UnBoxed, are now available to all advertisers in the United States. Advertisers supply budget, products and creative; Amazon's AI handles planning, execution and continuous optimization across channels.

A case study shared by Amazon shows the model in practice. Dog treat brand Canine Naturals used full-funnel campaigns to consolidate its disparate efforts across the platform. Over 206 days, a full-funnel campaign drove 41% of sales from new-to-brand shoppers and delivered higher return on ad spend than campaigns created separately.

"I don't have to do anything, just give it all the assets and it'll figure it out. That's music to my ears," said Brenda Quintana, digital marketing manager at Canine Naturals, in a statement.

DVA+ merges programmatic formats

Amazon Ads Agent also brings programmatic capabilities to all advertisers through DVA+, a new ad format that unites display, video and audio ads previously managed separately — including sponsored display, sponsored TV and display video and audio programmatic campaigns. DVA+ is powered by Amazon's Brand+ and Performance+ tools, which identify audiences and optimize toward outcomes, respectively. The format begins rolling out to all advertisers in late October through the end of the year.

Amazon's previously announced creative agent runs automatically in both full-funnel campaigns and within DVA+, scaling creative assets with generative AI. Cuisinart, working with agency partner Global Overview, tested the creative generation tool in a Q2 2026 pilot around its food processor products.

The results, per a case study shared by Amazon: an 18-point increase in detail page view rate versus traditionally produced assets, a 14% reduction in cost per detail page view and a 10-point lift in branded search rate.

The pilot also showed that brands and agencies can use AI tools without surrendering control of the ad-making process. Amazon reports adoption of generative AI tools by both large brands and the smaller advertisers many assumed would benefit most from AI-generated creative.

"We have great partnerships with agencies. We see this as a huge enabler for creative agencies; not all agencies have resources for all types of brands to build beautiful creative for every campaign," MacLean said. "Maybe it's a much smaller brand that they're advertising, in addition to the parent brand… and this is a way to also empower them to do that."

A more conversational console

Amazon has already launched a conversational experience within Amazon Ads with select capabilities. Advertisers using natural language to apply targeting recommendations saw more than 25% additional unique customers while lowering cost-per-impression by more than 10% on average.

At UnBoxed, Amazon added new chat capabilities spanning media planning, AI targeting, campaign guidance, natural language analytics, sponsored ads guidance and insight generation. The features are rolling out in beta to eligible advertisers across 20 marketplaces in 21 languages, MacLean said.

"[The conversational experience is] surfacing more opportunities to improve targeting, bids and budgets within a click or less, and then you can measure and ask more questions across your overall connected experience," she added.

The capabilities extend to Amazon Marketing Cloud, where advertisers can now access insights without knowing SQL. Dentsu beta tested the conversational experience, which has changed how its teams work, according to Jason O'Toole, executive vice president and head of commerce and retail media at the agency.

"Rather than spending hours on manual campaign setup and optimization, we can now make human-informed optimizations directly," O'Toole said in a statement. "Our strategists spend less time on execution mechanics and more time on the insights and creative thinking that drive results for our clients."

With DVA+ reaching all advertisers by year's end and the conversational beta live in 20 marketplaces, Amazon has set a timeline for turning its "radical simplification" pitch into the default way marketers buy across its properties.