I unpacked Amazon UnBoxed at 3am so you don't have to

Okay, I need to talk about Amazon's UnBoxed conference because I've been doom-scrolling through their announcements at 3 AM like it's my ex's Instagram feed (we all do it, don't judge). And what I'm seeing is making me both fascinated and slightly queasy—like watching a nature documentary where you know the gazelle isn't going to make it.

Amazon just dropped what they're calling "game-changing" advertising updates, and everyone's either panicking about agencies dying or pretending everything's fine while secretly updating their LinkedIn profiles. But here's the thing nobody's talking about: Amazon isn't trying to kill agencies. They're doing something way more ambitious. They're trying to become the only advertising platform you'll ever need to think about.

The Great Platform Consolidation Nobody Asked For (But We're Getting Anyway)

Remember how annoying it was having to juggle between Amazon's Ads Console and their DSP like you're some kind of digital circus performer? Well, Amazon finally noticed we were all slowly losing our minds switching between platforms with different logins, different reporting, different everything. Their solution? Smash it all together into one "unified Campaign Manager."

I talked to Alexander Swade from SYNQ (the guy's managed over $1 billion in Performance Marketing and Amazon ad spend, which is either impressive or terrifying depending on your perspective), and he called this consolidation "an excellent solution." Which, fair enough—it was genuinely weird that Amazon kept their DSP in a completely separate universe like it was some kind of exclusive club we weren't cool enough for.

But here's what's really happening: Amazon is removing friction not because they suddenly care about our mental health, but because complexity was limiting how much money we were giving them. Can't spend advertising dollars if you can't figure out where to click, right?

AI Agents That Are Actually Just Really Expensive Interns

Amazon announced three new AI "agents" (because everything needs to be an agent now, apparently):

• Creative Agent: Makes videos and display ads that won't win any Cannes Lions but won't embarrass you either

• Ads Agent: Builds campaigns from your rambling instructions (good luck with that)

• AMC Agent: Turns your audience descriptions into SQL queries so you don't have to pretend you remember computer science

Alex's take on the Creative Agent is hilariously diplomatic: the output is "not exceptionally stunning" but "remains adequate for certain use cases." That's like saying gas station sushi is "technically food." But he's got a point about the AMC Agent—being able to describe audiences in plain English instead of SQL is genuinely useful for those of us who break out in hives at the sight of database queries.

The Ads Agent, though? Alexander points out the obvious problem: "the accuracy of campaign setup, especially when instructions are vague." So basically, it's like having an assistant who only does exactly what you say, which sounds great until you realize how bad most of us are at giving clear instructions.

The Sponsored Product Videos That Will Eat Your Budget (But Maybe Good?)

Here's where things get spicy. Amazon's rolling out Sponsored Product videos, which take up way more space on search results pages. More space = more visibility = higher costs for everyone. It's the advertising equivalent of manspreading on public transit.

Alexander sees this as "a significant opportunity and potential game-changer," but then asks the question that should keep every seller up at night: "Will they leverage the existing Sponsored Brand placements?"

Translation: Is Amazon about to force us to pay Sponsored Product prices (their cash cow) for what used to be Sponsored Brand inventory? Because that would be peak Amazon—solving a problem we didn't know we had by making us pay more for something we were already buying.

The Absolute Worst Feature That Nobody Should Touch With a Ten-Foot Pole

And then there's Sponsored Product Prompts, which might be the most cynical revenue grab I've seen since... well, since the last Amazon revenue grab.

Here's how this dystopian nightmare works: Amazon's AI (Rufus, which sounds like a golden retriever but acts like a loan shark) generates questions it thinks customers might ask. Then—and this is where it gets truly bonkers—Amazon makes YOU pay to sponsor the answers to questions THEY created.

Alexander absolutely destroys this feature: "Amazon creates the questions it anticipates a customer might ask the AI. Amazon then instructs its own Sponsored Product campaigns to sponsor these very prompts. This creates a closed loop where Amazon is essentially prompting itself and sponsoring its own AI-generated questions."

It's like if Google started writing search queries for people and then charged you to appear in results for searches they invented. Actually, don't give them ideas.

The Actually Good Stuff (Yes, There's Some)

Not everything is a corporate cash grab dressed up as innovation. The unified reporting is legitimately fantastic—you can finally pull reports for more than a microsecond of data and combine metrics that were previously allergic to each other.

Alex's enthusiasm here is genuine: "It's a significant improvement, finally allowing users to download reports for extended time frames." For anyone who's spent hours manually stitching together reports like some kind of data archaeologist, this is actually huge.

What This Means for Agencies (Spoiler: They're Not All Doomed)

Everyone's asking if agencies are dead. The answer is: only the boring ones.

If your agency's entire value proposition is "we know which buttons to click in Amazon's interface," then yeah, you might want to start that podcast about your journey to find yourself. But if you're actually doing strategic work—figuring out which products to push based on margins, creating campaigns that don't look like everyone else's, interpreting data in ways that lead to actual business decisions—you're probably fine.

The automation handles the grunt work. It doesn't handle the thinking work. Yet.

The Real Strategy Here (And Why We Should All Be Slightly Concerned)

Amazon's advertising business did $15.7 billion in Q2 2025. That's a 22% year-over-year growth rate that would make a venture capitalist weep tears of joy.

What they're really doing with these tools is widening the funnel. Make it easier to advertise → more people advertise → more competition for ad space → prices go up → Amazon executives buy another yacht.

It's the same playbook they've always run, just with AI sprinkled on top like truffle oil on overpriced fries. The question isn't whether this makes advertising easier (it does). The question is whether easier advertising actually helps sellers, or just creates more competition for the same eyeballs.

The Bottom Line: Adapt or Get Amazoned

Look, these changes are coming whether we like them or not. Amazon owns the playground, and we're all just trying not to get sand in our eyes.

For sellers, this means you need to get comfortable with these tools now, before your competitors figure them out and eat your lunch. The unified platform makes it easier to test fancy stuff like streaming TV ads, which is great if you have the budget and terrifying if you don't.

For agencies, it's time for some honest self-reflection. If your main skill is navigating Amazon's interface, you might want to develop some new talents. Maybe learn to juggle. Or develop actual strategic capabilities. Either works.

The tools reduce friction, but they don't eliminate the need for strategy. You still need to know what you're selling, who you're selling it to, and why anyone should care. AI can't figure that out for you. At least not yet.

And honestly? That's probably a good thing. Because the day AI can completely replace human judgment in advertising is the day we all need to find new careers. Maybe we'll all become prompt engineers. Or maybe we'll just go back to print advertising and pretend the internet never happened.

Either way, I'll be here at 3 AM, reading Amazon's next announcement and trying to figure out how they're going to charge us for it.

• Canva unveils a Creative OS, with a new AI model powering simpler video editing, forms, Sheets and Grow so marketers design, launch and track campaigns in one place.

• OpenAI starts selling extra Sora credits for four dollars and teases paid IP cameos, showing the viral video tool is shifting from free playground to serious revenue engine.

• Wharton finds 74 percent of firms that measure it already see positive gen AI ROI, especially in tech, finance and smaller companies, challenging the enterprise AI gloom.

• Webflow gets 10 percent of signups from AI discovery and ChatGPT traffic that converts six times better than Google, proving AI visibility now beats raw traffic as a growth metric.

• Apple readies a March Siri reboot quietly powered by Gemini, pairs it with new home hardware and lines up big Apple Intelligence upgrades across next year operating systems.

• Powell warns AI is driving a low hire labor market, as big firms use automation to grow output with fewer staff while the Fed juggles weak job creation and sticky inflation.

• Perplexity is turning Comet into a meeting native assistant that auto records sessions, sends recaps and ties into mail, positioning itself against Google and Microsoft at work.

• Sora lands on Android as an invite only app 

• Personal ChatGPT users are urged to switch off Improve the model for everyone and companies are nudged to Business accounts so connectors and work data stay private.

• ChatGPT mostly cites Wikipedia and other high authority domains, only a third of top pages are influenceable and fresh, frequently updated expert content wins the most mentions.

• Comet Assistant upgrades into a real browser agent that understands complex sites, jumps across tabs and grinds through multistep chores so you can hand off more work.

🎧 Listener.fm - Perfect your podcast with AI-driven post-production.

⚡ GrowEasy: Kickstart a lead generation campaign on Facebook and Instagram in less than 5 minutes using AI.

📊 Syncly - Surface real customer pains with AI feedback analysis

📝 Flipner - Create masterful content faster than ever with this AI assist

📧 Shortwave: An AI tool that searches your entire email history, writes drafts in your voice, schedules meetings, and saves you an hour every day.

😍It was great, all I needed

🙂Good, not great

🙄It sucked