Amazon Unboxed 2025 Recap and What’s Coming in 2026

Amazon Unboxed is Amazon’s annual advertising conference, where they announce new ad products and tools months before most sellers even hear about them. It is essentially Amazon showing you the strategy for the next 12-24 months.

Here is what Amazon Unboxed 2025 had in store for sellers. For years, you could not prove that upper-funnel ads like Prime Video or display actually drive sales.

You could only justify sponsored products because the tracking was simple with customer searches, ad clicks, and purchases, and it was done.

Brand awareness obviously mattered, but good luck to sellers for convincing anyone to spend money when you had zero data showing results. So most sellers kept pouring budget into the same crowded Sponsored Products auctions while competitors quietly tested strategies you didn’t even know existed.

Amazon now has multi-touch attribution. It tracks every ad a customer saw before making a purchase, not just the final click. The customer sees your Prime Video ad in January, clicks a display ad in February, and buys through Sponsored Products in March. All three ads get credit. This completely changes how you should think about budget.

The problem is that your competitors figured this out six months ago. They’re already running full-funnel campaigns with data that proves they work.

This guide breaks down what Amazon announced at Unboxed 2025, what’s actually live right now, which tools matter for your business size, and what’s likely to come at the 2026 event.

Quick Guide:

What is Amazon Unboxed?

Amazon Unboxed Announcements: What is live in 2026

Common Mistakes Sellers Make While Preparing for Amazon Advertising Unboxed

Final thoughts

What is Amazon Unboxed?

Amazon Unboxed is Amazon’s annual advertising conference, where it announces new ad products and tools before introducing them to sellers.

It shows where Amazon is heading strategically, which tells you what kind of advertising will work over the next 12-24 months.

The Amazon Unboxed 2025 event focused on making advertising accessible through AI. Amazon unifies the Ads Console and Amazon DSP into a single media buying tool called Campaign Manager, eliminating the need for separate accounts and manual metric compilation. Full-funnel campaigns leverage AI to unify planning, activation, and ongoing optimization across the entire funnel, streamlining the path from awareness to conversion.

Advertisers can now query and command campaigns conversationally through Ads Agent, such as asking to show underperforming campaigns. Creative Agent can now create streaming TV ads, making professional creative accessible without design teams.

For products, Sponsored Products Video allows advertisers to upload up to five unique videos per ASIN, enabling shoppers to scroll through feature-specific clips directly in search results

Amazon is breaking down the barriers between upper-funnel and lower-funnel advertising using AI.

Amazon is positioning itself against Google and Meta as a complete advertising platform. For years, Google and Meta had brand awareness budgets, while Amazon had only conversion dollars. Amazon wants both.

Amazon is building a complete ecosystem covering awareness (Prime Video and streaming TV), consideration (Sponsored Brand Video and display), and conversion (Sponsored Products). This directly impacts how you need to advertise going forward.

Brands running full-funnel campaigns build awareness through video, nurture consideration through display, and then convert with sponsored products. By the time customers see their Sponsored Product ad, they already know the brand. These customers convert at higher rates and cost less to acquire.

Amazon Unboxed Announcements: What is live in 2026

Interestingly, Amazon rolled out most of the features announced at Unboxed 2025. Here is what sellers can use right now, what the data shows, and what is likely to come at the 2026 event.

1. Attribution and analytics

Below is the section where we discuss the attribution and analytics in detail:

Multi-touch attribution (MTA): Now live

Amazon deployed MTA across Campaign Manager in early 2026. The system tracks every customer interaction with your brand across Prime Video, display ads, sponsored products, and organic visits. Instead of only being credited for the last ad click, sellers can now see the full purchase path.

Amazon’s advertising conversion rate has averaged 9.96%, significantly outperforming the standard e-commerce conversion rate. Sellers are using the MTA data report for 15-30% better budget allocation because they can finally justify upper-funnel spending with hard attribution data.

You might think about how this will help you. With MTA, you can prove to your CFO that the Prime Video ad campaign you ran in January influenced the sales that happened in March. Before MTA, that video ad used to get zero credit. Now, you have data showing that it started the customer journey. Sellers using this are shifting 20-40% of their budget from oversaturated sponsored product auctions into cheaper upper-funnel placements.

12-month customer value tracking: Fully deployed

The unified campaign manager provides access to 15 months of daily insights and 6 years of monthly data in a single interface. Amazon’s predictive models now estimate what each acquired customer will spend over 12 months, not just 30 days.

This shift is important because Amazon’s advertising revenue reached $56.2 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $69 billion in 2025, indicating that auction costs are rising. Average CPC is projected at $1.18 to $1.24 for 2026, an 8-12% increase from 2025’s $1.12.

This will help you in a way that when you acquire a customer through an expensive Prime Video ad, it might look unprofitable on day 30, but it will deliver 10x returns over a period of time, likely a year, through repeat purchases.

Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) with Ads Agent: Live

Amazon delivered the conversational AI interface as they promised. Ads Agent is an AI-powered targeting assistant that suggests audience segments and keywords based on natural-language inputs, providing full transparency into why each recommendation was made.

Sellers don’t need a data analyst to query AMC; now they can ask, “Which audience segments have the highest repeat purchase rate?” or “Show me underperforming campaigns.” The system explains why it made specific recommendations instead of just telling you what to do.

This helps the enterprise brands that have been using AMC for years with dedicated data science teams. Smaller sellers could not access these insights. Now, a seller running a $50k/month ad budget has the same analytics capabilities as brands spending $5M/month. The playing field just leveled significantly.

2. Bidding and optimization

Here are the three bidding and optimization strategies introduced during Amazon Unboxed:

Audience bid boosting: deployed Q1 2026

Now, Amazon automatically raises bids when high-value customers search your keywords. A repeat customer searching for “protein powder” triggers a higher bid than a random browser. A shopper new to the brand gets different treatment than someone who has already bought from your competitor.

Over 70% of Amazon sellers now actively advertise, up from 40% five years ago, which means every auction is more competitive. Audience bid boosting lets you win the clicks that actually matter while staying conservative on low-value traffic.

This will help you understand that not all clicks cost the same, but they should not all be worth the same bid either. Sellers combining audience bid boosting with placement bid modifiers report 25-40% better efficiency because they are bidding precisely, while competitors bid the same amount for everyone.

Performance and campaign type: Limited Rollout

A full-funnel campaign launched in 2026 as an AI-powered campaign type that activates across display, video, and streaming TV in one workflow, dynamically optimizing creative, targeting, and budget allocation.

Amazon’s AI handles everything with targeting, bidding, creative selection, and optimization across channels.

It helps sellers with products across multiple channels who need to scale fast without manually managing 20 campaigns. The AI handles the complexity you don’t have time for. Don’t use it if you are in a competitive category where small optimizations matter or if you need to see exactly what is happening.

3. AI Creative Tools

Two AI creative tools that will help you drive more traffic are here:

Creative agent: Fully Live

Creative Agent can now create streaming TV ads and is available in the unified Amazon Ads console. Amazon’s AI generates images, audio, and video creatively at no cost. Quality isn’t perfect, but it is good enough for testing.

Brands using AI-generated images saw a 5% lift in sales. Generate five video variations in an afternoon instead of waiting weeks for a designer.

This helps in commodity categories like supplements, phone accessories, and home goods. In visual categories like fashion or beauty, professional creativity is considered better. Use AI to test fast. Sellers report a 75% reduction in creative production times for testing.

Sponsored products video: Live February 2026

Sellers can upload up to five videos per ASIN, and shoppers can toggle through feature-specific clips directly in search results. Shoppers watch 10-second clips showing your product working without leaving search.

Early adopters report 18-35% higher click-through rates and better conversion because shoppers who click after watching already know what the product does. They’re further along in deciding.

Upload videos in Campaign Manager, and set bid adjustments like placement modifiers. Shoppers see features before clicking through, which means higher-quality traffic and better conversion rates.

4. Prime Video & Streaming TV

Amazon Unboxed 2025 introduced Prime Video and streaming TV. Let’s see how it benefits the sellers.

Prime Video Advertising

Amazon Prime Video’s ad-supported tier reaches 130 million U.S. viewers. Amazon expanded to Brazil, India, Japan, the Netherlands, and New Zealand in 2025 and secured exclusive global digital streaming rights for NBA and WNBA games starting with the 2025/2026 season.

Bank of America projects that Prime Video could generate $3.5 billion to $5 billion in ad revenue in 2025. Shoppable ads let viewers add products to their cart while watching Thursday Night Football.

Prime Video now has the scale and premium content to compete with traditional TV for brand awareness budgets. With MTA tracking, sellers can prove direct attribution from video view to purchase. A customer watching an NFL game can buy your product without leaving their couch, and you can track the complete path.

Complete TV Platform – Live

Complete TV consolidates activation, optimization, and reporting for Amazon’s entire publisher ecosystem into a single platform. Before, buying ads across Prime Video, Freevee, Twitch, and Fire TV meant navigating different platforms and manually combining reports. Now it’s one interface.

The barrier to streaming TV advertising just dropped significantly. If complexity kept you out before, that excuse is gone. Sellers with brand-building budgets can now access premium streaming inventory without the need for agency-level resources.

5. New Product Launch Tools

What Amazon unBoxed 2025 Recap of looks like with new product launch tools:

New Product Launch (NPL) Service – Available Now

Amazon provides a 90-day accelerator with optimized full-funnel media plans and creative for new launches. The service coordinates on-platform advertising (Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and display) with off-platform advertising (social and programmatic).

Amazon handles media planning and optimization. Sellers provide the product and budget. This matters because the first 90 days determine whether Amazon’s algorithm gives your product organic visibility or buries it.

This helps in competitive categories; initial velocity determines success or failure. Amazon is explicitly showing sellers the playbook for launching successfully, instead of leaving everyone to guess the algorithm. Early users report 40-60% faster time to profitability on new product launches.

What’s Coming at Amazon Unboxed 2026

Amazon UnBoxed 2026 will be hosted at the Moscone Center in San Francisco over four days. Based on Amazon’s pattern and current advertising performance, here’s what’s likely to be introduced:

The Numbers Driving Strategy

Amazon’s global advertising revenue is projected at $65-70.8 billion for 2026, up from $56.21 billion in 2024, representing 20%+ year-over-year growth. In Q2 2025, advertising captured 9.36% of Amazon’s total revenue, the highest share ever recorded. Services income now constitutes almost 60% of Amazon’s income, up from 50% in 2021.

This means Amazon’s entire business model now depends on advertising growth. They’ll announce features that push more sellers into paid advertising while making it more effective for those already spending.

Likely Announcements

Expect deeper AI integration across creative production, with tools that generate complete campaign strategies from product descriptions. Amazon will probably announce expanded attribution windows beyond 12 months and tighter integration between retail data and advertising targeting. Complete TV will likely expand with more publisher partnerships and better cross-channel measurement.

The shift toward off-platform advertising will accelerate. Recent partnerships with Roku and Disney’s real-time ad exchange demonstrate how Amazon sees off-platform growth as vital to its continued advertising success. Expect announcements around using Amazon’s advertising technology to reach customers on non-Amazon properties.

What This Means for Sellers

Over 70% of Amazon sellers now actively advertise, and declining organic visibility forces more paid support. The 2026 announcements will focus on helping sellers justify higher ad spend through better measurement and more efficient tools. Amazon needs sellers to spend more as CPCs rise, so they’ll deliver features that make advertising ROI clearer.

The sellers who attend unBoxed 2026 (or watch the livestream and implement immediately) will get 3-6 months of competitive advantage before these tools become standard practice. By the time most sellers hear about new features through blogs and forums, early adopters will have already optimized their approach and captured the initial efficiency gains.

Common Mistakes Sellers Make While Preparing for Amazon Advertising Unboxed

We have listed four common mistakes for sellers.

1. Don’t Blindly Replace Everything With AI Creative

We see this constantly: a seller discovers Creative Agent, gets excited, generates 50 AI videos, and replaces all their working creative overnight. Then they wonder why sales tanked.

Arc Worldwide put it plainly: “Experiment and compare performance vs. current creative.” There’s a reason for that. A supplement brand I know swapped professional lifestyle shots for AI images, and conversion dropped 22%. A phone case seller did the same thing, and conversion went up 8%. Same tool, opposite results.

Here’s what actually works. Keep your current creative running. Test AI variations on 20% of your traffic for two weeks. If AI wins, scale it. If it tanks, you just saved yourself from a costly mistake.

2. Don’t sit on the sidelines while your competitors building audiences

Every week, we hear, “I’ll run Prime Video ads when I can measure them properly.” The measurement tools are live. MTA is deployed. 12-month customer tracking exists. Complete TV is accessible.

While you’re debating, your competitors are buying Prime Video placements at CPMs that won’t last. Amazon’s advertising conversion rate of 9.96% significantly outperforms standard e-commerce, but that only matters if customers actually know your brand exists.

Six months from now, those competitors will have audience data you don’t. They’ll have tested creative while you’re still reading blog posts. They’ll have established brand recognition. When you finally start, you’re walking into auctions they’ve already optimized.

Start small. Take 10-15% of your monthly budget and test the upper funnel. Use MTA to track which awareness campaigns drive sales weeks later. Scale the winners. The sellers who keep waiting for “perfect conditions” will be the same ones complaining about CPCs next year.

3. Running Amazon Like It’s Still 2019

Services income now constitutes almost 60% of Amazon’s income, up from 50% in 2021. Amazon isn’t primarily an e-commerce company anymore. They’re an advertising platform that happens to sell products.

Too many sellers still treat this like a keyword bidding game. Bid on “protein powder,” hope someone clicks, and optimize for ACOS. That’s not how this works anymore.

Amazon’s algorithm rewards full-funnel behavior. I’ve seen sellers running only sponsored products watch their organic rankings decline month after month. Meanwhile, sellers coordinating Prime Video, display, and product ads together see better organic visibility, lower CPCs, and customers who actually stick around.

Map your campaigns to the customer journey. Awareness (Prime Video, Sponsored Brand Video for cold audiences), consideration (Sponsored Display retargeting, comparison ads), and conversion (Sponsored Products for high-intent searches). Then use MTA to see how they actually work together. Stop guessing.

4. Letting Creative Become Your Limiting Factor

Envision Horizons nailed it: creative asset availability is “the bottleneck for brands looking to increase media spend.” Full-funnel campaigns launched in 2026 require display, video, and streaming TV creative to work across channels.

I talk to sellers every week who want to scale into streaming TV or video ads but don’t have the assets. You need different creatives for Prime Video (15-30 second spots), Sponsored Products Video (5-10 second features), Sponsored Brand Video (15 second demos), and display ads (multiple image sizes). They look at $2,000-$10,000 per professional video asset, see that bill adding up, and freeze.

You can use Creative Agent to generate 20 test variations in an afternoon. Free. Find what actually resonates with your audience. Then invest in professional production only for the winners.

This completely flips the old model. Instead of spending $5,000 upfront hoping the creative works, you test for free and only pay for proven concepts. It’s not even close to being a difficult decision.

The bigger issue here is not planning. If you want a major Prime Video campaign for Q4, you need creative ready in Q2. Production takes 4-8 weeks. Testing needs another 4-6 weeks. Sellers who start thinking about this in September miss the entire opportunity. Don’t be that person.

Final thoughts

Amazon Unboxed 2025 delivered what they promised. Over 70% of Amazon sellers now actively advertise, and declining organic visibility forces more paid support. The sellers who master full-funnel advertising in 2026 get a 6-12-month head start before this becomes standard.

But Amazon’s native tools are a mess to manage. Campaign Manager puts everything in one place, which is great until you’re staring at 200 campaigns trying to figure out which ones are burning money and which ones are making it.

Here, SellerApp will solve your execution problem. SellerApp tells you what to do. SellerApp’s PPC optimization uses AI and rule-based strategies to automatically manage bids, keywords, and budgets. We have optimized over $3B in ad spend and managed $5B+ in revenue, averaging 30% more orders and 45% lower ACoS.

When Amazon’s MTA shows a customer saw your Prime Video ad, clicked display, and then bought through Sponsored Products, SellerApp adjusts bids, gathers top-performing keywords, and moves budget based on rules you control. You’re not manually tweaking hundreds of bids every week.

The sellers who are succeeding in 2026 are combining Amazon’s infrastructure with software that actually acts on the data. Amazon built the tools. SellerApp gives you the automation to use them without hiring three people or spending 20 hours a week on campaign management. You have about six months before everyone else figures this out.