Amazon Ads Agent and Full-Funnel Campaigns: What Brands Need to Know

Amazon is making a significant change to the way brands manage advertising across the funnel.

At unBoxed 2026, Amazon announced that Amazon DSP is becoming Amazon Ads Agent and moving closer to Sponsored Ads within a single advertising environment, alongside a new full-funnel campaign type.

For brands, the important part isn't simply the platform change.

It's what happens when awareness, consideration and conversion activity can be planned together.

From separate campaigns to one full-funnel approach

Historically, brands have often had to think about Sponsored Ads and DSP as separate parts of their Amazon advertising strategy.

Sponsored Ads can capture shoppers actively searching and considering products.

DSP, video and streaming TV can help build demand beyond the immediate search moment.

Amazon's new full-funnel campaigns bring those activities together under one campaign and one budget.

That creates a different way of thinking about Amazon advertising.

Instead of asking:

“How much should we spend on Sponsored Ads?”

brands can start asking:

“How should our total Amazon investment work across the customer journey?”

What is Amazon Ads Agent?

Amazon is also adding more AI into the campaign management process.

Amazon's wider Ads Agent product is designed to help with campaign planning, optimisation and analysis, while keeping advertisers in control of proposed changes.

That distinction is important. AI can remove a lot of manual work. But removing manual work isn't the same as removing the need for strategy.

What are the results?

Amazon's closed-beta results for the new full-funnel campaign approach report:

67% higher long-term return on ad spend and 29% lower cost of winning new customers.

These are Amazon's reported beta results, so brands shouldn't assume the same numbers will automatically translate to every category or account.

What does this mean for brands?

The biggest opportunity isn't simply automation. It's the ability to think about Amazon advertising as a connected system. A shopper might first encounter a brand through streaming TV. They might then see a video or display ad. They might search for the product on Amazon.

And finally, they might convert through a Sponsored Products or Sponsored Brands placement.

If those touchpoints are managed in isolation, it becomes harder to understand how each contributes to the eventual sale.

Full-funnel campaigns are designed to make that connection easier.

But AI doesn't replace expertise

This is where we think brands need to be careful. Amazon is making it easier to launch, analyse and optimise campaigns. That's useful. For basic campaign management and repetitive tasks, AI can save significant amounts of time.

But advanced full-funnel advertising involves decisions around:

• Audience strategy

• Budget allocation

• Creative

• Incrementality

• Channel mix

• New-to-brand growth

• Measurement

• The role of each stage of the funnel

Those decisions still require context. The opportunity isn't to replace expertise with AI.

It's to use AI to remove some of the operational workload so more time can be spent on the strategic decisions that actually affect growth.

What should brands do now?

Full-funnel campaigns are already available for brands selling on Amazon. Rather than immediately moving an entire account across, we'd recommend a controlled test.

Keep your existing activity running and ring-fence a test budget for a suitable product set. Then compare the results against your existing approach using metrics that matter to your business not simply Amazon's headline beta figures.

The key question isn't:

“Does Amazon's new campaign type work?”

It's:

“Does this approach improve our results compared with how we're currently managing the funnel?”

That's the test worth running.

The takeaway

Amazon is moving towards a world where the distinction between upper- and lower-funnel advertising becomes less rigid.

The technology is making it easier to connect the two.

But the strategic challenge remains the same: knowing where to spend, who to reach, what to say and how to measure whether it actually drove growth.

AI can help with the execution.

It doesn't remove the need to get those decisions right.