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Amazon ad sales grow 11% as its Ads Agent stays gated
Amazon now names its whole ad platform after an AI agent, but advertisers still have to request the conversational agent itself through an Amazon account team.
Amazon sold $19.64 billion of advertising in the third quarter of 2026, it said on 29 October, below the $20.82 billion analysts expected, CNBC reports. Growth slowed to 11 per cent, from 24 per cent a year earlier, partly because Prime Day fell in June this year, Modern Retail notes.
The results are the first since Amazon renamed its ad platform. At its unBoxed event on 29 September, Amazon merged sponsored ads and its DSP, the tool for buying display and video ads, into one platform called Amazon Ads Agent. The AI agent behind the name, a conversational assistant for planning and running campaigns, is still in closed beta in 25 countries, and advertisers ask for it through their Amazon account team, PPC Land found on Amazon’s own pages.
Shoppers, meanwhile, use Amazon’s AI more. Alexa for Shopping, the assistant formerly called Rufus, reached more than 400 million customers over the past 12 months, Andy Jassy said, against 350 million at the end of July; its users spend 50 per cent more than other customers, he added.
Amazon’s creative AI costs nothing extra. Amazon’s guide calls its Video Generator free, and its news post of 17 September 2025 offers Creative Agent at no additional cost, so you pay only for the campaigns, as our 19 October check records. Our guide to Amazon product video with AI adds that the Video Generator turns one product into six Sponsored Brands videos and is listed for the US marketplace in English.
So a US advertiser can make six AI Sponsored Brands videos of a product today at no fee, yet has to go through an Amazon account team even to ask for the conversational agent its ad platform is now named after.
Sources
- PPC Land: Amazon calls its ad platform an agent, but the agent is still closed beta. Checked
- CNBC: Amazon Q3 2026 earnings report. Checked
- Modern Retail: Amazon says more than 400M customers have used Alexa for Shopping in the last 12 months. Checked
Alexandre S.
Alexandre S. is a creative ad strategist and copywriter with ten years' experience in digital marketing across multiple channels.