Amazon Ads hits $19.6B in Q3 as it bets on its AI Ads Agent

Marketing Dive puts Amazon’s ad revenue at $19.6 billion in Q3, up 12%. That’s a noteworthy slowdown from 26% in the second quarter.

Amazon is betting on agentic AI, and the pitch is simpler buying for you. Still, the trade-off is visibility. Check that part before you hand over more decisions.

Why growth slowed

Amazon blames timing. Prime Day moved from July to June, so the windfall you’d normally see in Q3 landed in Q2. Two other factors also played a part:

• Prime Video’s NBA schedule slowed things.
• Amazon lapped a search overhaul from last year that had helped it monetize traffic at a higher rate.

Meanwhile, Amazon says outside shopping agents aren’t hurting ad revenue yet.

Andy Jassy told investors few customers are doing much of that shopping yet. Amazon blocked Meta’s Muse, a consumer shopping agent, from its marketplace last month.

Amazon forecasts high-teens ad growth for Q4, compared with 22% a year earlier. If you’re planning Q4 spend, that’s the number to plan around.

What the Ads Agent does

Digiday says Amazon Ads Agent debuted at unBoxed in San Francisco in September. It brings sponsored ads, display, video and audio into one buying experience.

You describe what you want in plain language, and the agent then plans campaigns, forecasts reach, adjusts budgets and can recommend and execute optimizations.

Two products carry the overhaul:

• Full-Funnel Campaigns mix sponsored ads, display, video and streaming TV in one campaign. You set products, creative and budget, and Amazon’s AI decides how it runs.
• DVA+ folds sponsored display, sponsored TV and programmatic display, video and audio into one buying path. You pick an objective, budget and creative, and Amazon handles targeting.

For Full-Funnel, Amazon claims beta tests showed these gains against manually configured full-funnel campaigns:

• up to 67% higher return on long-term ad spend
• 29% lower cost per new-to-brand customer

That said, for DVA+, you can open advanced settings and keep conventional DSP controls.

Where the transparency gap is

Amazon says you keep real authority. Kelly MacLean, its vp of the demand-side platform, told Digiday that DVA+ buyers still control budgets and pacing.

Advanced settings also let you control:

• bidding
• audience targeting
• supply selection
• frequency

Amazon describes that setup as human-led and AI-supported.

Still, the gaps are real.

Amit Bhattacharyya, Amazon’s Full-Funnel vp, acknowledged limits in the controls. If you run Full-Funnel, you approve creative but can’t pick channels or specific audiences.

He told Digiday Amazon is still figuring out how to give advertisers like you more audience transparency.

Asked whether its tooling would explain individual Sponsored Ads prices, Amazon didn’t commit. That leaves a practical question: can you see how your auction prices are set?

In August, the Federal Trade Commission and 22 state attorneys general sued Amazon over alleged deceptive auction practices.

The complaint says Sponsored Products advertisers paid their own winning bids about 80% of the time by 2024. Amazon disputes the allegations.

Though the suit covers existing auctions, not the new agent, it raises the same transparency question you’d ask about any automated buyer.

Alex Brownstein, founder of AHB Advisors and a former McKinsey consultant, splits agent transparency into five layers: data, decisions, pricing, delivery and results.

Brownstein says Amazon is open on some layers but not others.

DVA+ gets publisher-level reporting, while Full-Funnel lacks the same detail on channel pricing.

His sharpest line is that Amazon is “closed where its advantage sits.”

He also questioned how you can verify outcomes when Amazon controls both the buying technology and much of the purchase data.

Meanwhile, Jay Mandel, co-founder of the Marketing Accountability Council, raised concerns about the incentives behind automated buying decisions.

Why it matters

My read: the simpler setup will suit smaller advertisers who don’t have a specialist team. If you’re one of them, that’s a real benefit.

The catch, I think, is that the same simplicity removes the detail you’d need to argue back, and Amazon itself says its explanations aren’t finished.

So start with a simple check. Which mode are you in: manual, Full-Funnel or DVA+?

• Ask your account team for the auction pricing detail, since Amazon hasn’t committed to providing it yet.
• Check the reporting level: format-level for Full-Funnel, publisher-level for DVA+.
• Run your own incrementality tests, as Brownstein suggests, and compare them with your own customer data.

That leaves a harder question: how do you check the agent’s results when Amazon also reports them? The same company runs both the buying and much of the data.

I’d keep checking, even when the agent makes buying feel easy.

Common Questions

Is Amazon Ads Agent a replacement for manual campaigns?

Not exactly. DVA+ lets you set an objective, budget and creative while Amazon handles targeting, or you can use advanced settings to keep conventional DSP controls.

Did Amazon’s ad revenue slow in Q3 2026?

Yes. Ad revenue rose 12% to $19.6 billion, down from 26% growth in Q2, which Amazon ties to Prime Day moving to June, NBA scheduling and lapping last year’s search changes.

Is Amazon being sued over its ad auctions?

Yes. The Federal Trade Commission and 22 state attorneys general sued Amazon in August over alleged deceptive auction practices. Amazon disputes the allegations, which remain unproven in court.