Amazon REC Update: AI Creative That Scales Across Screens

Amazon REC Update: AI Creative That Scales Across Screens

For years, brands have faced the same uncomfortable trade-off in display advertising: invest heavily in producing hundreds of creative variations for every placement, device and audience, or run a handful of assets and accept that performance suffers. As shoppers fragment their attention across sites, apps, streaming and devices, that trade-off has only got harder.

Amazon Ads is going after that problem with a significant upgrade to Responsive eCommerce Creative (REC), its AI-powered creative solution inside Amazon DSP. Having built and managed creative for DSP campaigns across our client base, this is the update we'd flag as genuinely consequential, not because automation is new, but because of where Amazon is now pointing it.

What REC actually is

Responsive eCommerce Creative is Amazon's automated display solution for brands selling on Amazon. Instead of manually building every ad format, you select the products you want to promote and Amazon generates, adapts and serves the ads across Amazon shopping pages, Fire TV, Alexa-enabled devices, third-party sites, mobile apps and premium publisher inventory. The system adjusts the creative dynamically based on placement, audience behaviour, objective and context.

Amazon reports REC has driven performance improvements of up to 37% higher click-through rates and 26% higher conversion rates through real-time optimisation. Worth treating those as Amazon's numbers rather than a guarantee; in our experience the lift is real but varies a lot by category and how good the source product assets are.

Why it matters for brands

Creative has quietly become one of the biggest levers in advertising performance, often a bigger driver than bidding or targeting once those are competent. The problem has always been producing quality assets at the volume modern campaigns need. REC attacks exactly that bottleneck.

In the accounts we manage, the constraint is rarely strategy, it's production throughput: the brilliant campaign idea that stalls because nobody has time to build forty banner sizes and a dozen variations. Taking that manual work off the table lets teams spend their hours on what actually moves the needle, the offer, the audience, the message, rather than asset wrangling. For brands running across multiple markets, products and segments, that's a meaningful compression of timelines.

Rich media is becoming the standard

One of the bigger shifts is the move beyond static banners. REC can now build richer experiences using lifestyle imagery, brand logos, dynamic messaging, enhanced layouts and video. The point is creative that feels native to where it lands: a Fire TV placement can run as a full-screen, near-cinematic spot, while the same campaign on a publisher site adapts to feel more editorial.

This matters because the static banner has been quietly dying for years. Environments reward creative that fits them, and a format that auto-adapts to feel native is going to outperform one that looks like a banner bolted onto a page. It also raises the bar on your inputs, the better your underlying product content and imagery, the better the automated output. Garbage in still gets you garbage out, faster.

AI is now making the creative, not just placing it

The most notable development is AI moving into creative generation, not just optimisation. REC can now animate static product images, generate lifestyle visuals, create product-in-use content, add contextual and seasonal elements, and optimise assets automatically. Amazon's example: a coffee product image given subtle rising-steam motion, or a seasonal campaign that layers in relevant visual elements without a full reshoot.

For brands, that means refreshing and testing creative without rebuilding from scratch every time. Our honest read: this is genuinely useful for multiplying and refreshing proven concepts, and weaker at originating a winning idea. Treat it as a force-multiplier on strong human creative, not a replacement for the thinking, which is exactly how we've found AI tools work best across both Amazon and TikTok creative.

Conversational commerce arrives in display ads

The most forward-looking addition: conversational shopping prompts are expanding beyond Amazon's own properties into display ads across the open internet. Shoppers may see product-specific questions inside a display ad, things like "What hair types is this suitable for?" or "Is this suitable for sensitive skin?", and clicking opens a conversation with Alexa for Shopping where they can ask follow-ups and potentially buy.

This is the part worth watching. It changes what a display ad is: not just a click to a product page, but the opening line of a product-discovery conversation. For considered purchases, where buyers have questions before they commit, that could materially change how display performs. It's early, and we'd test it rather than bet the budget on it, but the direction is significant.

The bigger picture for Amazon advertising

Step back and the strategy is clear. For years Amazon's edge in advertising was audience data and measurement. Increasingly, the battleground is creative automation, combining first-party shopping signals, AI-generated creative, dynamic optimisation and now conversational commerce into one loop where the ad continuously adapts to both the shopper and the environment.

It fits the broader pattern we've tracked across DSP for the past 18 months: Amazon turning the platform from a media-buying tool into an end-to-end growth engine. If you're weighing where DSP fits against your sponsored ads, creative automation is increasingly part of the answer.

What brands should take from this

Three shifts to internalise. Creative scalability is becoming automated, so the old excuse of "we don't have the assets" is fading. AI is now part of the creative process itself, not just targeting and bidding. And commerce and advertising are blurring, conversational prompts move the ad from traffic-driver to discovery-starter.

The practical takeaway: REC is evolving from a handy creative shortcut into a real performance lever, but it rewards brands that feed it well. Strong product content, clear creative direction and proper measurement are what separate brands who get the 37% from brands who get the platform average. For brands already on DSP, this is reason to revisit how you're using REC; for those not yet on it, it's another sign the platform is becoming a comprehensive video and display solution rather than a retargeting tool.

If you want a view on whether REC and DSP are pulling their weight for your brand, our DSP team will audit it honestly, including telling you where the automation isn't worth it yet.

Written by Curtis. Toucan is an Amazon Ads Advanced Partner and TikTok Shop Partner, managing programmatic advertising and creative for ambitious consumer brands across the UK and Europe.