Amazon Ads, the company’s demand-side ad tech business, hosts its annual industry show, called unBoxed, in Nashville this week.
The event can be boiled down to one word: simplicity.
Some version of the word “simple” is ubiquitous at the show this year. “Simplifying Advertising through Innovation” is the literal headline for the day-one keynote from Kelly MacLean, Amazon Ads VP of engineering, science and product.
And the term came up more than a dozen times in an interview between AdExchanger and two Amazon Ads VPs: MacLean and Jay Richman, who’s in charge of product for Amazon’s programmatic creative tech.
Amazon Ads solicits constant feedback from its advertisers, MacLean told AdExchanger in response to a question about the increase in ad platform products that are framed as “easy buttons” or “one-click” campaign activations.
“We just constantly hear how complex it is right now,” she said. Marketers must produce creative, run A/B testing programs, audit online ad delivery, manage search and other campaigns across many platform accounts and run measurement testing for the whole lot.
“So that’s really where we we’ve anchored a lot on hearing their feedback, [and] figuring out how we can drive even more simplicity,” she said.
What’s new
There is one piece of news that doesn’t revolve around the notion of simplifying a marketer’s time and effort to scale up ad budgets. And that’s the introduction of Sponsored Product video units.
That one is simple to understand, at least, in keeping with the theme.
Amazon advertisers can now upload up to five product videos, which might animate a product (a jacket or dress swishing naturally on a person) or display a feature. For advertisers that opt in and upload the assets (and pay more for the inventory), Amazon will convert a static sponsored product listing into a video.
Richman said Amazon Ads will also make certain personalization decisions, too. If a kitchen appliance comes in multiple colors, say, Amazon might display a certain color based on a user’s purchase history, if that person has previously selected that color for home goods.
The rest of the announcements from unBoxed aren’t exactly new, so much as a simplification of what already exists.
Amazon has made it easier to buy across broad swaths of streaming TV and audio with recent partnerships with Disney, Roku, Samsung, iHeartMedia, Spotify and SiriusXM, MacLean told AdExchanger.
These media deals “make Amazon Ads the only place now where US advertisers can get all of their premiums streaming TV and audio under one roof,” she said.
Amazon’s many media properties are a “vast and sprawling network,” Richman added. And that’s not even to mention the DSP spanning the open web.
“What Kelly and I spend time obsessing over,” he said, “is how to simplify and hide all of the complexity away from brands.”
Don’t hate, consolidate
An important part of the overall simplification that Amazon is selling comes down to consolidation. Advertisers are logged in to a million different platforms. Wouldn’t it be easier to log into one?
To that end, Amazon has consolidated its ad-buying platforms, Ads Console (mostly Amazon sellers who want sponsored product listings) and Amazon DSP (programmatic advertisers) into a unified product called Campaign Manager.
“Advertisers of all sizes can now very simply manage campaigns across the funnel through one global entry point,” MacLean said.
“The next piece,” she said, is to leverage “agentic AI to simplify campaign planning, management, execution and measurement.”
The Amazon Ads agent is an in-platform chatbot that monitors campaigns and makes planning and optimization recommendations.
After an advertiser uploads a media plan or targeting strategy, the Amazon Ads agent assembles the creative elements, plans the buy and informs the customer of changes to their campaign. With the advertiser’s approval, a campaign can begin “automatically, in a few steps,” Maclean said, and go from there to a full implementation within a few seconds.
The focus on simplicity isn’t going to end this year.
In 2026, Richman said Amazon Ads will roll out its full-funnel AI-based campaigns. This means Amazon’s conversion-based AI products will incorporate more upper-funnel branding ads, which traditionally haven’t been associated with purchase-based attribution windows because they’re more about building awareness and brand identity.
From Amazon’s perspective, though, that’s just an opportunity for greater simplification.
“With all of this unification and simplicity,” Richman said, “we’re continuing to double down on performance.”
