Amazon Turns Its Entire Ad Stack Agentic And Collapses The Buying Silos

At unBoxed in San Francisco, Amazon Ads rebranded the Amazon DSP as DVA (display, video and audio) and merged the console and DSP into "the Amazon Ads Agent," an AI layer that now spans planning, campaign creation, optimisation, measurement and support. The default campaign setup is DVA+, which lets an advertiser hand over objective, budget and creative while Amazon runs targeting and optimisation; advanced settings preserve manual control. A new Full-Funnel Campaigns product collapses sponsored ads, display, video, audio and streaming TV into a single campaign optimised toward new-to-brand customers and long-term sales. "Bringing the power of programmatic advertising to all advertisers," is how Amazon Ads VP Kelly MacLean described it, calling the approach "human-led AI supported." Full-funnel VP Amit Bhattacharyya conceded the transparency gap: "We are figuring out how to give them more transparency on the audience side." The launches land while the Federal Trade Commission and 22 state attorneys general sue Amazon over an alleged secret ad surcharge scheme, and when Digiday asked whether buyers would see how winning prices were determined, Amazon would not commit.

The crux

Amazon is moving AI from a feature inside its buying tools to the thing that runs them, and advertisers who delegate their media plan to the agent also delegate the ability to see why their budget went where it went.

Sell-side read

The collapse of the Amazon DSP into an agentic default has two sell-side consequences. Amazon's own retail media and open-internet inventory get bundled into one optimisation, and the surcharge litigation raises the question of whether the agent will ever tell a buyer how a price was set. Publishers selling into Amazon's open-internet demand should assume less visibility, not more, on their own supply path.

Watch

Whether Amazon ships the promised audience-transparency and recommendation explanations, and whether the FTC case forces any auction-pricing disclosure.