ADWEEK Advantage is part of a series where every month, our top editors interpret what happened in each vertical, and what it means for the future.
At Amazon’s annual UnBoxed advertising event, the retail giant outlined an overhaul of its core ad platform to integrate chat-based features and AI.
Dubbed Amazon Ads Agent, the platform aims to integrate AI into all advertiser workflows, including two campaign types—DVA+ and full-funnel campaigns—that recommend which formats advertisers should buy to hit goals, from upper-funnel streaming campaigns to lower-funnel search ads.
While advertisers can apply controls, Amazon is pitching the revamped ads platform more broadly as a way for Amazon’s AI to guide advertisers’ spend and strategies.
“Amazon Ads Agent helps you move faster and with more confidence,” Kelly MacLean, vp of Amazon Ads, said during the keynote session at UnBoxed. “When you’re spending less time on mechanics, you get to ask the better question: What else is possible for my brand?”
In the short term: advertisers flag transparency issues
Despite the rise in AI, some advertisers are wary of having agents control ad buys, specifically when it comes to execution and optimization, said Zach Ricchiuti, vp of strategy at Kepler.
“When it comes to actually making decisions, that’s where we still have people stepping in and making decisions,” he said. “That’s the nuance that you still need.”
That said, Ricchiuti said there are use cases for agents to automate planning, research, and building campaigns.
He also warned that Amazon’s tools could be another example of a black box, similar to Google’s Performance Max, where advertisers lose some audience transparency and control for performance. In the case of Amazon’s tools, the company said that its AI can recommend which formats advertisers should buy based on a campaign’s budget and goal.
“It took a lot of years for Performance Max to be a product that people trusted,” Ricchiuti said. “The job of a brand and agency is to be skeptical of what a black-box solution is—there should be a healthy dose of skepticism around, like, what media and what audiences are actually being bought.”
