Agencies, resellers and partners that run display, video and audio campaigns on Amazon Ads have a new way to charge their clients, and a closing date for the old one. According to an Amazon Ads Support Center page updated on November 11, 2026, agency fees set from a manager account are in open beta in all marketplaces, with five calculation methods and four levels at which a fee can apply. The legacy agency fee, set campaign by campaign, can still be added until January 31, 2027, and will be removed by the end of March 2027.

In Short

Amazon Ads lets agencies, resellers and partners set their own markups or margins on Display, Video, and Audio campaigns from a manager account, in an open beta that covers every marketplace. Agencies get five ways to calculate a fee and can apply different rates per client, campaign or ad group, while Amazon records the fee in reports and reserves budget for it but does not bill it. The old campaign-level agency fee can be set only until January 31, 2027 and disappears by the end of March 2027, and campaigns that keep it do not get the new features.

What Amazon describes

Agency fees, according to Amazon, are "the markups or margins that agencies, resellers, and partners charge advertiser clients for managing their Display, Video, and Audio campaigns." Display, Video, and Audio, or DVA, is the label Amazon now uses for buying that used to run through Amazon DSP, its demand-side platform. Amazon retired the Amazon DSP product name on September 29, 2026, and the agency fee page uses the new vocabulary throughout.

Fees live in the manager account, which the page defines as the parent account for an agency or business. From there, an agency applies a fee to the advertiser accounts, campaigns or ad groups it selects. Eligibility is narrow by design. The tool is for "agencies, resellers, and partners that manage advertisers through a manager account," according to Amazon, and the page is blunt about everyone else: "Advertiser accounts can't set agency fees." A brand that buys its own media in-house has no use for the feature, and a client account sitting inside an agency's manager account cannot change the fee applied to it.

The most consequential sentence on the page is also the shortest. "Amazon doesn't bill agency fees." The fees appear in reports and reserve part of the campaign budget, according to Amazon, but collecting them is left to the agency. The page does not describe any link between the recorded fee and an invoice to the client.

The page defines the cost lines that the fees are calculated from. Supply cost is the cost of the media the ads run on. Total audience fees combine Amazon audience fees with third-party audience fees. 3P prebid fees are fees for using third-party prebid targeting in campaigns.

Amazon lists three benefits. Agencies can set up and name their own fees "without contacting Amazon." They can schedule a fee to start immediately or on a future date, and change or remove it without rebuilding campaigns or losing reporting history. And they can charge different fees to different clients, down to individual campaigns or ad groups.

Five methods, two kinds of arithmetic

Every calculation method is either a markup or a margin. A markup is calculated on a cost and added on top of it. A margin is taken out of the campaign budget and, in Amazon's words, "isn't used to buy media." Under a margin, the fee, the supply cost and other fees add up to the budget and never exceed it, according to the page. Four of the five methods are markups. One is a margin.

Calculation method Type Fee is based on
% of Supply Cost Markup Supply cost
% of Supply Cost + Amazon Audience Fee Markup Supply cost plus Amazon audience fees
% of Supply Cost + Total Audience Fee Markup Supply cost plus Amazon and 3P audience fees
% of Supply Cost + Total Audience Fee + 3P Prebid Markup Supply cost plus Amazon and 3P audience fees, plus 3P prebid fees
% of Budget Margin The campaign budget

The four markup bases nest inside one another. Each adds a cost line to the one before it: media alone, then Amazon's audience fees, then audience segments built on third-party data, then third-party prebid targeting. An agency that selects the broadest base earns its percentage on the data and targeting charges as well as on the media. How far apart the methods land on a real campaign depends on how large those charges are, and the page gives no figures for audience or prebid fees.

The list of bases also stops where it stops. It names supply cost, audience fees and third-party prebid fees, and nothing else. The page links to Amazon's Regulatory Advertising Fees as a related topic but does not say whether those charges count among the "other fees" that share the budget under the margin method. Amazon introduced the regulatory charges in response to national digital services taxes, and for DSP buyers they appear as a separate line item on the invoice.

Under the margin method, the fee is money that never reaches a publisher. In the industry's vocabulary it is non-working media, the share of a budget that pays for something other than the advertising itself. Under a markup, the fee sits on top of the media cost instead of inside a fixed total. The page says all agency fees reserve part of the campaign budget, but it does not spell out how a markup interacts with a fixed budget cap.

Amazon's worked examples

Amazon illustrates both kinds of arithmetic with a 3.5% fee and $10,000 in supply cost or budget.

For % of Supply Cost, the page multiplies 3.5% by $10,000 to reach a fee of $350, for a total of $10,350. By PPC Land's calculation, the $350 is 3.38% of that $10,350 total.

For % of Budget, the page gives this formula: ($10,000 x 3.5%) / (1 - 3.5%) = $362.69. It then states that the fee of $362.69, plus $9,637.31 in media and other fees, equals the $10,000 budget.

Is a 3.5% fee a 3.5% fee? Not in this example. By PPC Land's calculation, $362.69 is 3.63% of the $10,000 budget. A fee of exactly 3.5% of $10,000 would be $350, leaving $9,650 for media and other fees. The formula on the page is the standard conversion used when $10,000 is the cost before the fee: on that reading the total would be $10,362.69, and the $362.69 fee would be 3.5% of it. The sentence that follows the formula, however, holds the total at $10,000. Taken as written, the example has the agency receiving $12.69 more per $10,000 than a flat 3.5% of the budget, and the fee equals 3.76% of the $9,637.31 left for media and other fees.

The formula and the sentence after it cannot both describe a fee of 3.5% of a $10,000 budget. The page does not say which one reflects how the system computes the fee.

Even with that aside, the same headline percentage is worth more as a margin than as a markup. A margin of 3.5% of a total equals a markup of 3.63% on the cost beneath it, by PPC Land's calculation. Two agencies quoting "3.5%" to the same client can therefore collect different amounts, depending on which method sits behind the number.

Four levels, and the most specific fee wins

A fee can be applied at four levels, and Amazon sets a single rule for overlaps: "When more than one fee could apply, the most specific fee is used."

  • All current and future accounts is the baseline fee. It does not apply to accounts, campaigns or ad groups that carry a more specific fee.
  • Specific accounts replaces the all-accounts fee for the accounts selected.
  • Specific campaigns replaces the account fee for the campaigns selected.
  • Specific ad groups replaces the account fee for the ad groups selected.

Amazon's example uses four rates. An agency sets 3% for all accounts, 4% for Account A, 5% for Campaign X inside Account A, and 6% for Ad group Y inside Campaign X. Ad group Y is charged 6%. Other ad groups in Campaign X are charged 5%, other campaigns in Account A are charged 4%, and every other account is charged 3%.

The table describes an ad group fee as replacing "the account fee" rather than the campaign fee, but the example settles the order: the 6% ad group fee overrides the 5% campaign fee above it. Because the baseline covers future accounts, a client added to the manager account later picks up the baseline rate unless a more specific fee is set for it.

Fees can be scheduled to start on a future date, changed or removed without rebuilding campaigns, according to Amazon. The page does not say whether a change made mid-flight applies only to spend after the change or to the whole campaign.

One column in the reports

Whatever the method, every agency fee lands in the same place. According to the page, all agency fees "appear together in the Agency fees column" of reports. An agency charging markups to some clients and a margin to others sees the amounts combined in that column; the page mentions no breakdown by calculation method or by fee level.

What the client sees is a separate question, and the page leaves it open. It refers throughout to the reports of the person setting the fee, the manager account holder. It does not say whether users of the advertiser account, the client paying the fee, see the Agency fees column in their own reports.

The legacy fee and the March 2027 cutoff

The new system replaces an older one. The legacy agency fee can be set on individual campaigns until January 31, 2027, according to the page, and it "will be removed by the end of March 2027." The consequence for anyone who stays on it is stated plainly: "Campaigns that use the legacy agency fee don't get the features described on this page." No account-level baseline, no ad group overrides, no scheduling, no choice of method.

From the page update on November 11 to January 31 is 81 days, by PPC Land's count, and that window spans the fourth-quarter holiday season. The page does not explain what happens to legacy fees still attached to running campaigns when the feature is removed: whether they convert to the new system, stop applying, or require a manual rebuild. It also does not say when the open beta began, how the legacy fee was calculated, or whether the new fees can be managed through the Amazon Ads API. Setup itself is covered on a separate Support Center page, Set and manage agency fees.

The fee change is not the only dated change facing agencies on Amazon's display inventory this winter. From January 1, 2027, DVA display ads on Amazon Store placements will count an impression only once the ad appears on screen, with Amazon expecting counts about 63% lower on average. That notice did not say whether billing changes. If supply cost moves, every markup calculated on supply cost moves with it.

Why the page matters for agencies

Amazon has spent much of 2026 pulling its advertising products closer together, and the place of the agency in that structure has been an open question. On July 30, 2026, Amazon upgraded existing Amazon DSP accounts into a single advertiser account across 34 countries, with multi-country buying, unified billing and Amazon Marketing Cloud access. PPC Land asked whether the agency would be the next layer Amazon removed. Then came DVA+, a four-step campaign builder in US closed beta whose default tier hands targeting, bidding, inventory and creative to Amazon, with general availability across 35 markets targeted for the first quarter of 2027.

The agency fee page points the other way. Amazon is building the plumbing for agencies to charge clients inside its own platform, with rates set "without contacting Amazon" and controlled down to the ad group. That is infrastructure for intermediaries who stay. It does not settle whether the fees apply to DVA+ campaigns, which the page does not mention by name, or how a fee interacts with a campaign whose targeting and bidding are run by Amazon's default automation.

The manager account at the centre of the system has been extended in stages. Amazon introduced nested manager accounts in April 2024, letting agencies and advertisers link several manager accounts under one parent, with aggregate reporting from the top. In November 2025, Amazon combined sponsored ads and Amazon DSP in a single Campaign Manager beta that included multi-account management for agencies. A fee rule that cascades from "all current and future accounts" down to a single ad group fits that hierarchy.

Resellers appear by name on the page. Amazon's ad tech activation partner program, formalised in July 2025, lets partners create and own accounts through their own DSP seat for customers below Amazon's minimum spend. For partners working that way, the new tool gives the fee charged to each client a native place in Amazon's reporting.

The timing also lands in the middle of a broader argument about what agencies earn and how visibly they earn it. Holding companies have been folding AI token costs into principal media offers, with Omnicom's third-party service costs reaching almost $2.9 billion in the first half of 2026, up from $1.7 billion a year earlier. Fee friction has shaped platform relationships before: after The Trade Desk's first earnings miss in 33 quarters, Viant's Chris Vanderhook attributed agency resistance to its Kokai platform to fees.

A single Agency fees column puts the agency's take on the same report as the media it bought, which makes the fee easier to audit for whoever can see that report. Whether that includes the client is the question the page does not answer. The choice of method matters as much as the rate: a percentage of supply cost plus audience and prebid fees is a larger base than supply cost alone, and a margin of the budget, on Amazon's own example, works out to more than its headline figure.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Amazon Ads, and the agencies, resellers and partners that manage Display, Video, and Audio campaigns for advertiser clients through an Amazon manager account. Advertiser accounts cannot set the fees.

What: Agency fees, the markups or margins agencies charge clients, are in open beta in all marketplaces. Agencies choose among five calculation methods, four markups on supply cost and related fees and one margin on the campaign budget, and apply them at four levels from all accounts down to single ad groups, with the most specific fee taking precedence. Amazon does not bill the fees; they appear in a single Agency fees column in reports and reserve part of the campaign budget. Amazon's own % of Budget example produces a fee equal to 3.63% of the budget for a 3.5% setting, a gap the page does not explain.

When: The Support Center page was updated on November 11, 2026. The legacy per-campaign agency fee can be set until January 31, 2027 and will be removed by the end of March 2027. The page does not say when the open beta began.

Where: All Amazon Ads marketplaces, for Display, Video, and Audio campaigns, the product formerly sold as Amazon DSP.

Why: The page does not state Amazon's reasons. The listed benefits are self-service fee setup without contacting Amazon, scheduling and changes without rebuilding campaigns or losing reporting history, and different fees per client down to the campaign or ad group. The change arrives as Amazon consolidates its buying products and as agency margins face closer scrutiny, and it leaves open whether clients can see the Agency fees column in their own reports.