Amazon has removed from its Ads Support Center the page that explained the Account Transparency Log, the console feature that shows sponsored ads account admins which user carried out certain changes on their account. The page was listed in the US, UK and German help centers on November 13, 2026, filed under Account management and then Manager accounts, and was no longer listed there on November 14. Its last revision was dated February 24, 2026.

In Short

Amazon took down the help page for its Account Transparency Log, a console page where sponsored ads admins can see which user changed what on their account. For agencies and brands with many users in one account, the page was Amazon's written record of where the log sits and what it captures. Amazon has not said whether the log itself was retired, moved or renamed, so what is certain is that the documentation is gone and the feature's status is unconfirmed.

What the page said

The page opened with a one-line summary: "Reference the Account Transparency Log to view account action by user." Its case for the feature was framed in governance terms rather than performance ones. "For security, audit, and compliance purposes, account admins often need to know which user was responsible for changes to their account," the page stated.

The tool itself was described in a single paragraph. "Using the Account Transparency Log, sponsored ads account admins will be able to visit this page to see an audit trail of certain types of actions taken on their account," according to Amazon. "This feature allows admins to search, filter, and export events to CSV from the ads console."

Two sentences set the scope, and both matter for anyone trying to work out what the log could and could not prove. "The Account Transparency Log will publish events from user and account management, so that admins can reference these events," the page said. Then came the limit: "Keep in mind that only events from actions taken in the ads console will be published on this page."

The wording is narrower than it first appears. The log covered "certain types of actions", not every action. Its published events came from user and account management, which is a different category from campaign edits such as bids, budgets or targeting. And anything done outside the console was, by the page's own definition, excluded.

Item What the page said
Who could use it "sponsored ads account admins"
Stated purpose "security, audit, and compliance purposes"
Events published "events from user and account management"; "certain types of actions"
Excluded Actions not taken in the ads console
Console location Administration, then Security
Default order Most recent date and time first
Period control Date Range drop-down
Filter offered User, with exact email address search
Export format CSV
Help center path Support Center Homepage > Account management > Manager accounts
Last modified February 24, 2026 (all three language versions)

How the log was reached, according to Amazon

The page described the route to the log and the controls inside it in four steps.

  1. The admin opens the menu in the bottom-left corner of the console and clicks the icon labeled Administration.
  2. In the side navigation, the admin clicks Security.
  3. The default table lists events in most recent date and time order. A Date Range drop-down changes the period the table covers.
  4. Clicking Filter displays a single option, User, which opens a User filter modal for an exact search by email address.

The overview promised search, filtering and CSV export. The steps, however, described only the date range and one filter, and they did not say where the export control sat or what columns a downloaded file contained. No other filter, such as event type, was mentioned.

The German version carried the same text in translation, under the title Kontotransparenzprotokoll (ATL). Its labels are recorded below, since anyone looking for the feature in a German-language console would see these rather than the English names.

English label German label
Account Transparency Log (ATL) Kontotransparenzprotokoll (ATL)
Administration Verwaltung
Security Sicherheit
Date Range Datumsbereich
Filter Filter
User Benutzer
Account management Kontoverwaltung
Manager accounts Verwaltungskonten

The German text described the log as a "Prüfpfad", the standard term for an audit trail, and repeated the same restriction: only events from actions in the ads console ("Anzeigenkonsole") would be published.

A removed page is not a removed feature

The disappearance of documentation does not establish that the log was switched off. No Amazon notice retiring the Account Transparency Log could be found, and no help page under another title describing the same Administration and Security view turned up in Amazon's public Support Center or its What's new announcements. The page simply stopped being listed.

Several explanations would fit those facts. The log could have been retired. It could have been merged into another administration page or renamed, with documentation to follow. Or the page could have been taken down for revision. Amazon has not indicated which applies.

There is one oddity in where the page lived. It was filed under Manager accounts, yet its text described a tool for "sponsored ads account admins" and never mentioned manager accounts at all. Whether the log worked at manager account level, advertiser account level or both was never spelled out.

A security page from 2022

The log is not new. The Helium 10 Buzz podcast of November 16, 2022, which linked to Amazon's launch announcement, described it as a new security page listing sensitive actions performed on an account through the advertising console, together with the username responsible for each change.

It arrived as one piece of a wider set of access tools. In January 2020, Amazon added a History tab to Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands campaigns, summarizing changes to campaign settings over the previous 90 days. That covered campaign edits; it did not record who managed users or account settings.

On April 22, 2021, Amazon introduced custom access controls for the advertising console. According to Amazon, standard admin and editor access levels let account admins grant a new user access to all console pages in one click, alongside specialized access for areas such as billing, Stores builder and Posts.

On January 20, 2022, Amazon added a third-party applications page, reached through Access and Settings and a Third Party Applications tab. According to Amazon, it lists the apps and services with access to an advertising account, shows which user authorized each one, and gives each app the same access as the user who authorized it.

Then, on June 15, 2022, Amazon announced global features for manager accounts at unBoxed, allowing accounts from any marketplace to be linked to one manager account and a user to be invited across all marketplaces in a single invitation, according to Amazon.

Taken together, the pieces answered different questions. Access controls set who could do what. The third-party applications page showed which outside tools held access. The campaign History tab showed which settings had changed. The Account Transparency Log was the piece that tied account-level actions to a named user, which is the essence of an audit trail: a time-ordered record that lets actions be attributed after the fact.

A console rebuilt around it

The log was documented for a console that has since changed shape several times. Amazon introduced the Manager Account in October 2020, letting advertisers and agencies link accounts and manage user access, billing and performance from one dashboard. On November 19, 2020, Amazon extended it to a manager account covering sponsored ads and Amazon DSP, with user and access management that could restrict a user to a subset of accounts.

Nested manager accounts followed in 2024, letting users with access to a parent account manage user access across every level beneath it. On September 30, 2025, Amazon announced a single advertiser account across Amazon DSP and sponsored ads, covering campaign management, reporting, user management and billing, with users invited at seat or advertiser level using standard roles or custom permissions. PPC Land reported in October 2025 that the unified account had opened to new advertiser registrations, with admin, editor and viewer roles applying across Amazon DSP and sponsored ads.

The interface was merged next. Amazon announced a beta of a Campaign Manager combining sponsored ads and Amazon DSP on November 10, 2025, and on December 3, 2025 described a unified Campaign Manager as one global entry point. On July 30, 2026, Amazon announced that existing Amazon DSP-only accounts would be upgraded automatically to a single global account across 34 countries, with admin, editor and viewer roles managed on one page across ad products. On September 29, 2026, Amazon retired the Amazon DSP name in favor of Amazon Ads Agent, the renamed demand-side platform, while its conversational Ads Agent remained in closed beta in 25 countries.

Other console pages are already on their way out. When unified reporting reached general availability in June 2026, Amazon set December 31, 2026 as the sunset date for the separate Sponsored Ads and Amazon DSP reports pages.

The Account Transparency Log page, by contrast, never mentioned Amazon DSP, the global advertiser account or the newer role structure. Its last revision in February 2026 kept the original framing: a tool for sponsored ads account admins, reached through an Administration icon and a Security tab.

The console-only limit

The page's narrowest sentence has become more significant as Amazon has opened other routes into accounts. Only "actions taken in the ads console" were published to the log. Changes made elsewhere were outside its scope.

Those other routes have widened. On November 13, 2025, Amazon opened a closed beta of its Amazon Ads MCP Server, a server built on the Model Context Protocol with tool groups for account management, billing, campaign management and reporting, including write actions such as raising a campaign budget. The server supports a read-only annotation that lets administrators block write operations. On February 2, 2026, Amazon moved the server to open beta for partners with active API credentials.

On the page's own terms, changes made through the API or through tools connected to it would not have appeared in the Account Transparency Log. The page, revised three months after Amazon launched Ads Agent in November 2025, did not address how actions taken through that agent would be logged.

Google, for its part, has been adding friction around user access. Google Ads began requiring a second admin to approve the removal of another user's access, PPC Land reported on July 14, 2026, with unapproved requests expiring after 20 days. Google had earlier introduced optional two-step verification and email domain restrictions for Google Ads accounts in 2018.

Why the page mattered

For a single advertiser with one login, an account audit log is rarely consulted. For an agency running dozens of client accounts, or a brand with in-house staff, freelancers and partner tools all holding access, the question of who added a user, removed one or changed account settings is routine. The page gave Amazon's answer in writing: where the record was, what it covered, what it omitted and how to export it.

That written answer has a use beyond the console. Compliance reviews, client disputes and internal security checks often depend on documentation of what a platform records, not only on the data itself. With the page withdrawn and no successor found, no current Amazon help page describing an account-level user activity log for sponsored ads could be located.

What the page did not say

Even before its removal, the page left gaps. It did not list which user and account management events were captured, how long events were retained, whether the log covered manager accounts, Amazon DSP or the global advertiser account, or which columns the CSV export contained. Amazon has not said whether the feature was retired, moved or renamed, or when any replacement documentation will appear.

Key facts

  • Feature name: Account Transparency Log (ATL); German title Kontotransparenzprotokoll (ATL)
  • Help page ID: GA8QKH28BHRYUX5L
  • Page addresses: https://advertising.amazon.com/help/GA8QKH28BHRYUX5L (US), https://advertising.amazon.co.uk/help/GA8QKH28BHRYUX5L (UK), https://advertising.amazon.de/help/GA8QKH28BHRYUX5L (Germany)
  • Help center path: Support Center Homepage > Account management > Manager accounts (German: Support-Center - Startseite > Kontoverwaltung > Verwaltungskonten)
  • Last modified: February 24, 2026, at 19:16:13 UTC (US), 19:16:15 UTC (UK) and 19:16:25 UTC (Germany)
  • Last listed in the Support Center: November 13, 2026
  • No longer listed: November 14, 2026
  • Console path described: Administration > Security (German: Verwaltung > Sicherheit)
  • Eligible users: sponsored ads account admins
  • Scope: events from user and account management; console actions only
  • Controls: Date Range drop-down; User filter with exact email address search; CSV export
  • Feature in place since: at least November 16, 2022
  • Amazon statement on retirement or replacement: none published

Timeline

Summary

Who: Amazon Ads, and the sponsored ads account admins, agencies and brands that share Amazon advertising accounts across several users.

What: Amazon removed its Support Center page for the Account Transparency Log (ATL), the console view under Administration > Security that lists user and account management events by user, with date range, user email filter and CSV export. Amazon has not said whether the feature itself was retired, moved or renamed.

When: The page, last revised on February 24, 2026, was listed on November 13, 2026 and was no longer listed on November 14, 2026. The feature has existed since at least November 2022.

Where: The US, UK and German versions of the Amazon Ads Support Center, where the page sat under Account management > Manager accounts.

Why: The page was Amazon's written description of how admins could attribute account changes to individual users for security, audit and compliance purposes, and of its limit to console actions only. Its removal leaves no current Amazon documentation for an account-level user activity log in sponsored ads, at a time when the console, account structure and API access routes have all changed.