Amazon just rebuilt the control panel for how brands buy ads on its platform, and most sellers have no idea it happened. At unBoxed 2026, Amazon’s annual advertiser event held September 28 to 30 in San Francisco, the company folded its DSP and its Sponsored Ads console into a single AI-driven system called Amazon Ads Agent. If you have ever had to log into two different dashboards to manage Sponsored Products and a separate DSP campaign, that split is going away. What replaces it is worth understanding before Q4 spend decisions lock in.
The headline change: one login, one AI, your whole ad account
Amazon Ads Agent merges what used to be the Ads Console (Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Display) with the Amazon DSP into one unified buying experience. Instead of toggling between tools, you work inside one interface, and a conversational AI layer sits on top of it. You can ask it questions about performance, have it build a campaign from a media plan, or let it manage channel mix across your account.
The conversational piece is currently in expanded closed beta, so most sellers will not see the chat interface yet. The underlying merge of the console and DSP, however, is the structural change, and that is rolling out more broadly. The practical effect: your Sponsored Products history and your DSP history are about to live in the same place, which means your reporting and your budget planning need to account for both in one view going forward instead of two.
DVA+: one campaign, one budget, across display, video, and audio
The feature with the most immediate relevance for sellers is DVA+, which Amazon says is already available to all advertisers inside Ads Agent. DVA+ lets you set up a single campaign that spans display, video, and audio under one objective and one budget, rather than building separate campaigns for each format. There is a fully automated mode where AI handles targeting and bidding, and an Advanced Settings mode where you keep manual control over reach, frequency, and bid strategy.
If you currently run display ads for retargeting, this is worth testing with a modest budget this quarter. The upside is less time spent stitching together creative and targeting across formats. The tradeoff, based on early advertiser feedback, is less granular visibility into which specific channel drove a given result once everything sits under one combined budget. For sellers who rely on channel-level attribution to decide where to cut or scale spend, that is a real consideration, not just a minor UI change.
Full-Funnel Campaigns and the AI creative tools
Full-Funnel Campaigns is Amazon’s pitch for advertisers who want to set a single goal, whether that is awareness or conversions, and let AI manage the mix of video, display, and audio needed to get there. Amazon reported beta results of 67% higher long-term ROAS and 29% lower cost to acquire new-to-brand customers, which are strong numbers worth noting, though they come from Amazon’s own beta testers rather than independent data, so treat them as a directional signal rather than a guarantee for your category.
Alongside this, Ads Agent now includes generative AI creative tools that build display ads and video spots directly from your existing product images and bullet copy. Amazon cites up to 71% more product coverage and up to 15% sales growth for advertisers using the tool, again Amazon’s own figures. For sellers who have avoided video and display ads because producing creative felt like too much work or too expensive, this lowers that barrier meaningfully. It will not replace a genuinely strong brand video, but for filling gaps across a catalog of dozens of SKUs, it is a real time saver.
Branded Conversations and Sponsored Services: two new placements to watch
Two newer ad formats got less attention but matter depending on your category. Branded Conversations extends Sponsored Brands into Alexa for Shopping, letting your brand show up inside a multi-turn conversation when a shopper asks Alexa for product recommendations, pulling from your catalog data to explain how products work together. If your listings have thin or inconsistent bullet points and backend data, this is one more reason to clean that up now, since the AI pulls directly from what is already in your catalog.
Sponsored Services, powered by a partnership with Yelp, connects shoppers to local service providers, starting with home and auto services, directly from product pages, order confirmations, and tracking pages. If you sell anything that typically needs installation (appliances, fixtures, flooring, car accessories) this is a new placement type to keep an eye on as it rolls out, even though Amazon has not given a firm general availability date yet.
What to actually do with this before Q4 spend decisions lock in
None of this requires an overnight overhaul, and most of it has no firm launch date yet outside of DVA+. Here is a reasonable priority order. First, if you have any display or video budget sitting idle because managing separate campaigns felt like too much overhead, test DVA+ this month with a small, bounded budget and compare the combined result against what separate campaigns were producing. Second, audit your product listing data, bullet points, backend search terms, A+ Content, before Branded Conversations rolls out more broadly, since an AI assistant pulling from sloppy catalog data will surface that sloppiness to shoppers. Third, do not hand your entire ad budget to full automation yet. Keep Advanced Settings or manual campaigns running in parallel so you have a clean comparison point, because Amazon’s own beta numbers, however good, are not your numbers until you have tested them against your margins.
The bigger picture here is one Amazon has been building toward for a year: fewer separate tools, more AI sitting between you and the raw levers, and bigger claimed efficiency gains in exchange for less granular control. That tradeoff might be a great one for a seller stretched thin managing ads solo. It is a tradeoff worth watching closely if your margins are tight enough that losing channel-level attribution actually costs you money.
Frequently asked questions
Is Amazon Ads Agent replacing Seller Central or Sponsored Products as I know them?
No. Ads Agent is replacing the separate DSP and Ads Console interfaces with one unified experience. Your Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Display campaigns still work the same way at the core; you are simply managing them, and now DSP, from one place, with an AI layer available on top.
Do I need a DSP account already to use DVA+?
Amazon states DVA+ is available to all advertisers within Ads Agent, which suggests it is not gated behind an existing DSP relationship the way DSP access sometimes has been in the past. If you have only run Sponsored Products before, this is worth testing directly rather than assuming it is out of reach.
Should I switch my campaigns to full AI automation right away?
Not entirely, and not yet. Test the automated mode on a limited budget alongside your existing manual campaigns so you have a real comparison. Amazon’s reported beta results are encouraging, but they are not a substitute for seeing how your specific products and margins perform.
When will Branded Conversations and Sponsored Services be generally available?
Amazon has not published firm general availability dates for either feature as of this writing. The practical move is to prepare your listing content now (accurate bullets, complete backend search terms, solid A+ Content) so you are ready whenever they do roll out more broadly.
If untangling which of these new tools are worth your Q4 budget and which ones to wait on sounds like more than you want to figure out alone, that is exactly the kind of PPC and listing strategy work I do for sellers as a freelance Amazon FBA and e-commerce growth consultant.
Sources:
Amazon Advertising, “unBoxed 2026 news: Explore the latest advertising announcements”
KwickMetrics, “Amazon unBoxed 2026: Every Ad Change That Hits Your Budget This Q4”