Amazon Ads Agent and DVA+: What Brands Should Change After unBoxed 2026

EXPERT VIEW · AMAZON ADS AGENT

Updated November 2026. At unBoxed 2026 on September 29, Amazon Ads announced that the unified buying experience formerly described as the combined Ads Console and DSP is now called Amazon Ads Agent. Inside it sit three campaign types: sponsored ads, Full-Funnel Campaigns, and Display, Video, and Audio (DVA+). Amazon also expanded the conversational experience that helps advertisers plan, target, analyze, and apply changes in natural language. This guide is Eva Commerce’s practical read for Amazon sellers and brands who already run Sponsored Products and Brands, and who are deciding what to change before peak traffic finishes.

What Amazon Ads Agent actually is

Amazon Ads Agent is the media-buying workspace for Amazon advertising. Amazon describes it as the place where sponsored ads, Full-Funnel Campaigns, and DVA+ share one connected experience, with optional conversational AI for answers, recommendations, and actions. You can still build campaigns manually, let Amazon’s AI optimize, or mix both.

That matters because many brands still talk as if “the console” and “the DSP” are separate products with separate teams. Operationally, the buying surface is converging. Strategy should not. Search harvest, brand discovery, and off-Amazon reach still need different success metrics, creative, and budget rules even when they live under one login.

For a narrower primer on the older DSP framing, see Eva’s guides on Amazon DSP for brands and Amazon DSP campaign planning. Amazon says DSP buying now runs through DVA+ inside Amazon Ads Agent, with advanced settings when you want full control, and that existing DSP campaigns, audiences, and reporting carry over without disruption. Confirm current access and pricing with Amazon or your agency before you rebuild anything.

The three campaign types, without the marketing fog

Amazon’s own materials are the source for those definitions. The operational risk is not misunderstanding the labels. The risk is dumping one daily budget into Full-Funnel or DVA+, then judging the whole account by last-click Sponsored Products ACOS.

DVA+: what changed for brands that never touched DSP

DVA+ is Amazon’s simplified Display, Video, and Audio buying experience inside Amazon Ads Agent. Amazon says it combines what was previously managed through separate campaign types, including Sponsored Display, Sponsored TV, and programmatic campaigns. Advertisers pick an objective such as sales, traffic, or awareness, add products or a brand URL, review creatives, set a budget, and launch. Amazon’s Brand+ and Performance+ optimization layers handle much of the targeting and delivery unless you open advanced settings.

Amazon states that DVA+ was in extended closed beta in the United States, with open beta expected to begin in late October 2026, international expansion through Q4 2026, and general availability across 35 markets targeted for Q1 2027. Payment during closed beta was invoice-only, with credit card support planned for Q1 2027. Audio format availability expands after launch in Q4 2026. API access for these campaigns is targeted for general availability in Q1 2027. Those dates come from Amazon Ads’ DVA+ product page. Check your account for what is live for you today.

Amazon also publishes lift and efficiency figures for Brand+ and Performance+. Treat them as Amazon’s reported results with the usual caveat that individual results vary. They are useful for framing expectations, not as a guarantee for your catalog.

Full-Funnel Campaigns: useful, not magical

Full-Funnel Campaigns are available to advertisers in the United States, per Amazon. You provide budget, products, and creative. Amazon’s AI plans, executes, and optimizes across formats, with reporting that includes standard metrics plus new-to-brand and long-term sales metrics. Amazon reported that beta testers saw 67% higher long-term return on ad spend and 29% lower cost to acquire new-to-brand customers. Amazon also quoted Canine Naturals saying 41% of sales from Full-Funnel Campaigns were new to their brand. Those are Amazon-published claims. Use them to decide whether to test, not to rewrite your P&L forecast.

Eva’s view: Full-Funnel Campaigns are a strong test vehicle when you have a clear new-to-brand or long-term sales goal and enough catalog health that upper-funnel traffic can convert. They are a weak substitute for disciplined Sponsored Products structure when your problem is still wasted search spend on irrelevant terms.

The conversational layer: where time is saved, and where judgment still matters

Amazon says advertisers using natural language to apply campaign targeting recommendations saw more than 25% additional unique customers while lowering cost-per-impression by more than 10% on average. At unBoxed 2026, Amazon announced expansions across media planning, AI targeting, natural language analytics, and sponsored ads guidance, rolling out over the coming months.

That is real leverage for busy teams. It does not remove the need for a human to decide:

• Which products deserve upper-funnel budget this week
• What “success” means for a DVA+ awareness flight versus a Sponsored Products harvest campaign
• When to ignore a recommendation that would raise spend on a thin-margin ASIN
• How creative claims should be phrased for regulated categories

If your team only uses chat to “make ACOS go down,” you will push the algorithm toward short-window conversions and starve discovery. If your team uses chat to diagnose, then applies changes against written goals, you get the time savings without the silent strategy drift.

A decision framework Eva uses with brands

1. Separate the scorecards. Keep Sponsored Products and Brands on efficiency and profitable growth metrics you already trust. Give Full-Funnel and DVA+ their own scorecards: new-to-brand share, detail page views, reach, assisted sales, or site traffic, depending on the objective you selected.
2. Do not raid search to fund video blindly. Cut waste inside Sponsored Products first. Then fund DVA+ or Full-Funnel from a planned test budget, not from whatever is left after a bad week of CPCs.
3. Match creative to the job. Search ads need offer clarity and listing quality. Streaming and display need a story a stranger can understand in seconds. Amazon’s generative creative tools can accelerate asset production. Brand judgment still decides what is on-brand and compliant.
4. Use advanced settings when you have a reason. DVA+’s simplified path is enough for a first test. Advanced settings matter when you need deals, publisher controls, frequency caps, or format-level budget rules. Amazon says agencies with existing entity access have full access to both experiences.
5. Protect listing quality before you scale awareness. Upper-funnel spend that lands on weak titles, thin A+ content, or out-of-stock ASINs buys expensive disappointment. Fix catalog and inventory first. Eva’s Amazon SEO and listing work and Amazon management services sit upstream of media for a reason.

What to change this quarter, in order

• Week 1: Confirm who in your org can access Amazon Ads Agent, which campaign types are enabled, and whether DVA+ advanced settings are available. Document invoice versus card payment status if you are still in a limited rollout.
• Week 1: Write three goals on one page: harvest (Sponsored), discovery (Full-Funnel or Brand+ style awareness), and conversion assistance (Performance+ or retargeting). Assign a weekly budget ceiling to each.
• Week 2: Launch one contained DVA+ or Full-Funnel test on your strongest parent ASINs only. Keep Sponsored Products structure intact.
• Week 2: Align creative approvals so AI-generated assets are reviewed before they go live, especially for claims-heavy categories.
• Week 3 to 4: Read results on the scorecard you wrote in week 1. Expand only the objective that moved. Do not “average” a search ACOS with a video CPM into one fake health number.

Sponsored vs Full-Funnel vs DVA+: how to choose the next dollar

Use this as a budget conversation, not a product brochure.

The mistake is running all five rows as one campaign. Amazon Ads Agent makes it easier to buy more surfaces. It does not excuse a single blended KPI.

Measurement: keep the windows honest

Amazon advertising has always had mismatched windows: sponsored ads attribution, new-to-brand definitions, and longer DSP-style paths do not answer the same question. Ads Agent’s unified reporting view is helpful. It is still your job to avoid false conclusions.

• Do not cut Sponsored Products because a DVA+ flight looks expensive on day three. Awareness and mid-funnel work need enough delivery to read.
• Do not celebrate a Sponsored ACOS win that came from starving every discovery dollar. You may have bought cheaper clicks on people who were going to buy anyway.
• Write the lookback and the goal before launch. If the goal was new-to-brand engagement, judge that. If the goal was same-week profitable orders, do not hide behind a long-term sales chart.
• Reconcile to contribution margin. Platform ROAS is not take-home profit after fees, returns, and inventory interest.

Amazon says Ads Agent can surface nearly 1,000 metrics through natural language questions, including peer benchmarks. Use that speed to ask better questions, not to generate more vanity charts.

A sample two-week test plan for a mid-size brand

Assume you already spend meaningfully on Sponsored Products and Brands, your top ASINs are in stock, and account health is stable. Adjust the dollars to your size. The sequence matters more than the exact amounts.

1. Day 1: Freeze major Sponsored Products experiments for two weeks except waste cleanup. You need a stable baseline.
2. Day 1: Pick five to fifteen parent ASINs with strong conversion and review velocity. Exclude thin or suppressed listings.
3. Day 2: Launch one Full-Funnel or DVA+ campaign with a single objective. Cap daily spend so a bad week cannot empty the search budget.
4. Day 2: Approve creative. Reject anything that overclaims, looks off-brand, or conflicts with category rules.
5. Day 5: Check delivery and obvious setup errors only. Do not rebuild the whole thing yet.
6. Day 8: First real read against the written scorecard. Keep, iterate creative, or pause.
7. Day 14: Decide expand, hold, or stop. Document what you learned in one paragraph your CFO would accept.

If the test “works” only by counting every assisted path as incremental, you did not learn enough to scale. If it fails while listings were out of stock, you learned nothing about the media product.

Creative and claims in an AI-assisted workflow

Amazon is putting generative creative next to campaign setup. That is a productivity win for brands that used to wait weeks for a first display or streaming cut. It raises the cost of weak brand governance.

• Keep a one-page claims list: approved benefits, banned phrases, required disclaimers.
• Require a human sign-off before AI assets go live, especially in supplements, beauty, baby, and medical-adjacent categories.
• Match the story to the funnel. Search creative should clarify the offer. Upper-funnel creative should make a stranger care in a few seconds.
• Reuse what already converts on your detail page: proof points, differentiators, and lifestyle context shoppers already respond to.

Who on your team should own Ads Agent?

Give one person ownership of the weekly change log, even if several people have login access. Too many hands in conversational optimization creates silent churn: bids move, budgets shift, and nobody can explain Tuesday. A simple RACI works:

• Owner: approves goals, budgets, and major structural changes
• Operator: executes inside Ads Agent, including chat-assisted changes
• Catalog partner: confirms inventory, listing quality, and suppression risk
• Finance partner: confirms margin floors and cash timing for invoice billing during limited rollouts

Agencies fit when you need that operating rhythm across Amazon plus Walmart, TikTok Shop, or Shopify, or when your internal team is already underwater on catalog and retail operations. In-house fits when Amazon is the main channel, volume is steady, and you already have someone who can own profit outcomes rather than platform screenshots.

Where Vueria and agency management fit

Amazon Ads Agent changes the interface. It does not remove the need for profit-aware bidding, catalog hygiene, and weekly governance. Eva’s Amazon advertising software, Vueria, starts from $95/month and automates campaign structure, bidding, and budget allocation across Sponsored Products, Brands, and Video with profit analytics. Eva’s managed Amazon PPC services and Amazon DSP / Display, Video, and Audio services are for teams that want a Connected Commerce partner to set the goals, run the tests, and keep Sponsored and upper-funnel work from fighting each other. Published Amazon Growth Package pricing starts from $1,295 per month on Eva’s pricing page, with Growth Tier based on trailing Amazon sales. Final scope is confirmed after a free account review.

Common mistakes we see after a platform rename

• Renaming the meeting, not the plan. Calling it “Ads Agent standup” while still optimizing everything to seven-day attributed ACOS.
• Turning on every AI recommendation in one afternoon. Batch changes. Measure. Then batch again.
• Ignoring inventory and account health. Awareness ads that click into suppressed or low-stock listings waste budget and train the algorithm on poor outcomes.
• Letting chat rewrite bids without a margin floor. Natural language speed is only useful if profit rules are written down first.
• Treating Full-Funnel as a replacement for keyword hygiene. It is not. Search waste still needs negatives, match-type discipline, and listing relevance. See Eva’s Amazon PPC management guide.

How this fits Connected Commerce

Amazon is one surface. Many Eva brands also run Walmart, TikTok Shop, and Shopify. Amazon Ads Agent can improve how you buy Amazon media. It cannot decide how much demand you should pull onto Amazon versus another channel this week. That allocation still belongs to a channel plan tied to inventory, margin, and creative capacity. If you want that plan held in one place, start with Eva’s Amazon management conversation or book a call at 858-315-2020.

Frequently asked questions

Is Amazon Ads Agent the same as Amazon DSP?

No. Amazon Ads Agent is the unified platform. DVA+ is the Display, Video, and Audio campaign type inside it. Amazon says Amazon DSP is now part of Amazon Ads Agent and that DSP-style buying runs through DVA+, including advanced settings for full control.

Do I have to use Amazon’s AI to run ads now?

No. Amazon says advertisers can use manual tools, AI optimization, or a mix. The conversational experience is assistance, not a requirement to hand over every bid.

When should a brand start DVA+?

When Sponsored Ads already convert on your core ASINs, inventory can support incremental traffic, and you have a written goal that is not “make ACOS lower this week.” Start with a capped test budget and a separate scorecard.

Will Full-Funnel Campaigns replace my Sponsored Products structure?

They should not. Use Full-Funnel for discovery and longer-term sales goals. Keep Sponsored Products as the system that captures high-intent search with keyword and ASIN control.

Does Eva manage Amazon Ads Agent campaigns?

Yes. Eva Commerce manages sponsored ads and Display, Video, and Audio work for brands as part of Connected Commerce. Ask for a free account review on the book a call page.

Sources: Amazon Ads, Introducing Amazon Ads Agent (Sep 29, 2026); Amazon Ads, unBoxed 2026 news announcements; Amazon Ads, Reach new audiences using DVA+; Amazon Ads materials stating DSP is now part of Amazon Ads Agent (linked from Eva’s DSP guides).

Related Eva guides: Amazon advertising agency guide, Amazon PPC management, Amazon DSP for brands, best Amazon advertising strategies.

Next step: Book a call with Eva or call 858-315-2020.