The retail media giant’s new platforms and services are designed to help advertisers build unified campaigns that can deliver a stronger business impact.
Last week’s Amazon unBoxed conference in Toronto was highlighted by the introduction of unified, AI-enabled platforms that deliver simplified access to full-funnel media planning and activation. So it’s only fitting that three colleagues from across the Publicis Commerce ecosystem who are used to working collaboratively again joined forces to attend the event and bring back this aligned perspective on the key themes and takeaways they encountered.
The second unBoxed event held by Amazon Ads in Canada operated much like its U.S. predecessor last fall, giving the retail media giant a chance to bring the partner community together to “explore its vision for unified campaign management, AI tools that amplify human expertise, and a simpler approach to full-funnel advertising at scale,” according to the event’s website. That, in a nutshell, is what the Publicis Commerce team experienced.
Sammer Karrve
Director-Commerce Media
Publicis Commerce
Overall, unBoxed reinforced Amazon’s vision to provide its advertiser partners with opportunities to make more automated, data‑driven, and outcome‑focused media investments. One central theme was the introduction of Ads Agent, the new AI-enabled platform designed to help advertisers more easily set up and optimize campaigns. Amazon also announced the consolidation of the Amazon DSP and Sponsored Ads dashboards into a unified, single-login platform called Campaign Manager that will simplify activation and management across solutions.
A strong emphasis was placed on full‑funnel strategies, showcasing how advertisers can drive impact within and beyond the Amazon ecosystem through Amazon DSP. Amazon emphasized the importance of “moment marketing,” encouraging brands to capitalize on the high‑attention environments it offers such as live sports, Interactive Ads (pause ads within streaming content), and other real‑time, contextually relevant placements.
Among other product innovations, Amazon unveiled updates to the Sponsored Brands Collections format that let advertisers showcase up to three ASINs at the top of a page without the need for custom creative assets beyond a logo — making premium visibility more accessible and scalable.
Looking ahead, Amazon teased the upcoming rollout of Creative Agent, an AI tool that can generate high‑quality, production‑ready video assets from static pack shots and lifestyle imagery that will be suitable for use across all inventories and benchmarked against Amazon performance standards.
Finally, Amazon introduced a new framework that combines the Performance+, Amazon Marketing Cloud’s SQL Generator, and Audience Bid Boost capabilities to help advertisers better drive measurable business outcomes by:
• accelerating time to market through reduced manual effort.
• enhancing targeting precision via AMC‑enabled audiences and SQL‑driven insights.
• improving efficiency through automation.
• maximizing ROI across media investments.
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Courtney Rosebush
Director-Retail Search
Profitero+ Canada
As Sammer noted, there was a strong emphasis on full-funnel marketing strategies that can connect with shoppers at every available touchpoint — from Amazon DSP through Sponsored Ads and contextual placements on Prime Video (like Interactive Ads) that will capitalize on highly viewed content like live sports through the new NBA partnership. All of these illustrate Amazon’s efforts to provide full-funnel solutions at scale for all advertisers.
Streaming TV is part of that full-funnel offering. It’s becoming more addressable, with reach no longer the end goal. Amazon is leaning into enhanced tools such as Campaign Manager and AMC to unlock insights, and it’s using the proprietary Authenticated Graph solution to connect top-to-bottom funnel interactions — facilitating accurate measurement frameworks tied to real business outcomes.
Meanwhile, Amazon is working to make its ecosystem a one-stop shop for advertisers to consolidate their media strategies. With Campaign Manager, it’s unifying reporting capabilities to help advertisers build stronger measurement frameworks and gain one source of truth through comprehensive performance visibility.
The company is also placing a strong emphasis on the combined framework that Sammer mentioned (including the Brand+ solutions that will soon launch in Canada), which is expected to help advertisers lean into AI and automation to build better campaigns. The unified toolkit is expected to reduce manual work and accelerate speed to market, automate efficiency by leveraging predictive insights to drive better outcomes, and maximize ROI by providing clear evidence of uplift.
Agentic AI is driving the next evolution. Tools like Ads Agent and Creative Agent will simplify how advertisers plan and go to market. Ads Agent looks to streamline and reduce manual work by providing data-driven recommendations, simplified analysis, and in-platform optimization that are all controlled by the advertiser. Creative Agent will deliver a potentially faster track to launch. AI tools like these are central to Amazon’s roadmap and positioned as helping advertisers build powerful campaigns that strike a balance: improving optimization while respecting brand nuances.
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Ian MacDonald
Manager-Client Leadership
Mars United Commerce
The shift toward AI-assisted activation workflows was evident. Tools like Performance+ and Ads Agent are reducing manual campaign setup and optimization time, allowing teams to reallocate their efforts toward testing strategy, audience development, and cross-channel orchestration.
The enhancements to AMC mentioned earlier (SQL Generator and Audience Bid Boost) are lowering the technical barriers to custom audience creation, enabling more frequent test & learn approaches that are tied to real purchase-intent signals and measurable performance outcomes.
And, as noted previously, Amazon Ads is moving operationally toward integrated, full-funnel execution. But the consolidation of DSP and Sponsored Ads workflows intensifies the need for closer coordination across search, programmatic, and creative teams to support unified planning, pacing, and measurement. The opportunity now lies not just in leveraging automation, but in aligning teams and data structures to fully capitalize on these integrated workflows.
