Amazon Ads is putting more of the everyday work of running Sponsored Ads campaigns into AI.
The company announced a new set of advertising tools on September 22, led by auto-optimization that can add promising keywords, pause weaker ones and expand product targeting while a campaign is running. A separate AI-powered campaign intelligence dashboard will analyze performance and recommend changes to bids, budgets and targeting. Muthu Muthukrishnan, Vice President of Sponsored Ads at Amazon Ads, described the thinking behind the new tools in the Amazon Ads announcement:
“We continue to innovate to make it simple for small businesses to grow with the help of advanced AI tools.
And this isn’t simply another recommendation panel. With auto-optimization enabled, the system can make some campaign changes itself.
More Than Automated Bidding
Automated bidding is already familiar territory in PPC. Amazon’s new system goes further by making decisions around keywords and product targeting as campaign conditions change.
Once enabled, auto-optimization can:
- Add relevant keywords when new search opportunities emerge
- Pause keywords that are underperforming
- Expand targeting towards similar or complementary products and categories
- Identify seasonal opportunities as shopping behaviour changes
Amazon illustrates this with a home décor brand advertising planters at the start of summer. If “terracotta plant pot with saucer” suddenly becomes a strong search term that the advertiser hasn’t targeted, the system can add it. Weaker keywords can be paused at the same time.
Advertisers can see what has changed, track the spend and conversions associated with automatically added keywords, then edit or reverse those actions.
Early Tests Show a 13% Sales Increase
There are already some performance numbers attached to the feature.
During beta testing, campaigns using keyword auto-optimization recorded their first sale 40% faster and saw a 13% increase in sales, according to Amazon. These are the company’s own beta results, so they shouldn’t be treated as a benchmark for every campaign.
A New AI Dashboard Will Recommend Campaign Changes
Another part of the update is an AI-powered campaign intelligence dashboard that analyzes targeting, bids and budgets directly from the campaign overview page.
It can flag a high-performing keyword that is losing impression share and recommend increasing its bid. In another campaign, it might suggest changing targeting to reach shoppers who viewed a product but didn’t purchase it.
Each recommendation includes visuals showing its likely impact. Advertisers can apply the recommendation, edit it first or skip it entirely.
First-Party Data Is Part of the Update Too
The announcement isn’t limited to AI campaign management. Amazon is also expanding Ads Data Manager to Sponsored Ads, allowing businesses to combine their own information, such as website activity and email data, with Amazon’s shopping, browsing and streaming signals. The expansion is available globally now.
The company says advertisers using first-party data with Amazon Ads see a 30% improvement in return on ad spend compared with those that don’t. Again, that’s Amazon’s own performance data.
More Campaign Work Is Moving Into Automation
The updates point towards a wider shift in how Sponsored Ads campaigns can be managed. Automated bidding has been around for years; keyword discovery, targeting changes and ongoing campaign decisions are now increasingly being pulled into the same automated layer.
Muthukrishnan also addressed the broader thinking behind the rollout:
“When we see something working… we want to ensure that advertisers of all sizes can benefit.
Advertisers still set the campaign parameters and can review or reverse automated actions. But Amazon Ads is clearly moving further towards a model where its AI doesn’t just recommend campaign changes, but can make some of them while the campaign is running.