Amazon Ads today set out DVA+, a campaign flow inside Amazon Ads Agent that builds Display, Video and Audio campaigns in four steps, and said the product is in extended closed beta in the United States. Open beta is expected to begin in late October 2026, with general availability across 35 markets targeted for Q1 2027, according to Amazon.

In Short

Amazon today showed a new way to set up ads that run on streaming TV, online video, websites and audio: an advertiser picks a goal and some products, checks ads that software has drawn up, sets a budget, and the system then handles targeting, bidding and where the ads appear. It matters to sellers, brands and agencies that buy ads through Amazon, because the tool is meant to remove the need for programmatic expertise, although every performance figure Amazon quotes comes from its own internal data. For now it works only in the United States, by invitation, with payment by invoice, and Amazon expects a wider test in late October 2026 and a rollout to 35 markets in the first quarter of 2027.

What DVA+ does inside Amazon Ads Agent

Amazon does not expand the acronym in its announcement, but describes DVA+ as a simplified way to create Display, Video and Audio campaigns and as "a new way of working within Amazon Ads Agent". A single campaign can reach streaming TV, online video, display and audio inventory, on Amazon properties and the open internet, according to Amazon Ads. The document's headline promises "bringing the power of programmatic advertising to everyone", although several details further down narrow that promise.

The flow has four steps. An advertiser picks an objective - sales, traffic, awareness, leads and others - then selects products or a brand URL, reviews creatives generated by AI, and sets a budget. Targeting, inventory selection, format allocation, bidding, creative generation and continuous optimization then pass to the software, with "no DSP expertise required", in Amazon's words. The abbreviation stands for demand-side platform, the software through which programmatic ads are bought; Amazon's own is called Amazon DSP, a name the announcement never uses.

The product extends a run of consolidation at Amazon Ads. Ads Agent, which processes natural language instructions inside existing Amazon Ads interfaces, was presented at the unBoxed conference on November 11, 2025. A day earlier, a revamped Campaign Manager entered beta, merging sponsored ads and multimedia products with Amazon DSP in one workspace, and Creative Agent gained streaming TV and Sponsored TV formats on the same day as Ads Agent.

What DVA+ does not say is how it maps onto those pieces. Amazon's description is "Same infrastructure, same signals, same measurement." Whether a campaign built in DVA+ appears as ordinary line items in the Amazon DSP console, and whether it can be edited there, is left unstated.

Two ways of working, one toggle

Amazon frames the design as a way out of a forced choice between automation and manual campaign building: begin with AI, then add control where needed. The default tier hands audience targeting, bidding, inventory, creative, budget delivery and format selection to Amazon's models. A second tier, DVA+ with advanced settings, exposes the controls that programmatic buyers already use.

CapabilityDVA+ (default)DVA+ with advanced settings
Audience targetingManaged by AI automaticallyFull manual targeting, lookalikes, retargeting, suppression
BiddingAI-optimizedManual bid strategies, format-level CPM management
InventoryAI-optimized across Amazon and the open internetPublisher inclusion and exclusion lists, deal activation
CreativeAI-generated across formats (optional); review, edit or upload ownFull creative management, including dynamic creative optimization
BudgetSet once; AI optimizes deliveryFormat-level allocation, budget flighting, budget and frequency caps, budget calculator (streaming TV only)
Ad groupsSingle campaign structureMultiple ad groups with distinct targeting per format; AI-optimized and inventory-specific ad groups
Format selectionMulti-format, automaticPer-format configuration
Campaign GuidanceReal-time scoring with delivery and KPI predictionCampaign health score, explorer, recommendations, What-If analysis, pre-flight checks

Frequency capping, deal activation, custom bidding and audience controls all sit behind the advanced toggle, as do publisher lists. Advanced settings also add a dynamic workspace and an expanded set of Campaign Guidance tools. Advertisers can describe targeting in natural language, upload a media plan for translation into campaign structure, or configure every setting by hand, according to Amazon. Drafts, bulk management and pre-flight validation are described as arriving "as these features roll out", and the document gives no dates for them. In advanced settings, advertisers can also choose whether to use Brand+, Performance+, or neither.

Two internal inconsistencies are worth noting. The Key Benefits section labels Campaign Guidance as available in advanced settings only, while the capability table lists a real-time scoring version in the default tier. And creative generation is described differently in different places. The table says AI generation covers all formats; the text says it helps advertisers launch across display, online video and streaming TV, without naming audio; and a separate note states: "Audio format availability expands post-launch in Q4 2026." The assets themselves are generated from existing ASINs or a brand URL.

Brand+ and Performance+ do the optimizing

Both tiers run on Brand+ and Performance+, the automated products that debuted in 2024 as Amazon's answer to advertiser demands for transparent, AI-powered campaign management through Amazon DSP. According to Amazon, Brand+ drives awareness, reach and downstream engagement, while Performance+ drives consideration and conversion. DVA+ picks between them from the chosen objective. The document names sales, traffic, awareness and leads as example objectives but does not say which engine each one triggers.

The July release showed how the default behaves. On July 22, Amazon published ten capabilities for the pair, and Automatic Deal Selection replaced the single pre-configured deal on new Brand+ streaming TV prospecting lines with a system-chosen set, enabled by default. Several of the other capabilities also switched on without advertiser action. DVA+ moves that logic up a level. In the default tier, an advertiser chooses an objective, products and a budget, and reviews the creatives; the software decides the rest.

Seven performance claims, all from Amazon

Seven sets of results carry the case for DVA+. Each is labeled Amazon Internal Data or Amazon Internal Analysis in the footnotes, and each footnote ends with the same caveat: individual results may vary. No third party is cited.

ClaimGroupBasis in Amazon's footnote
Up to 68% improvement in cost per acquisitionBrand+ and Performance+ combinedU.S., 2025 (footnote 1)
68% improvement in cost per acquisitionOff-Amazon brands, Performance+Non-endemic analysis, Q4 2025, 14-day lookback (footnote 3)
34% higher ROASSellers, Performance+U.S., February 2025 (footnote 2)
71% more detail page views; 64% lift in purchasesSellers, Brand+Brand+ Prospecting campaigns, Q3 2025 (footnote 6)
8% lift in reach; 115% more brand site page views; 2.5x lift in conversion eventsOff-Amazon brands, Brand+Brand+ Prospecting, non-endemic, Q4 2025, 14-day lookback (footnote 7)
41% higher new-to-brand engagementStreaming TV, online video and display combinedU.S., 2025 (footnote 4)
Nearly 2x higher ROASCampaign Guidance engagers versus non-engagersROAS impact analysis, Q1 2026, North America (footnote 5)

Several features of the presentation complicate a straight reading. The 68% cost-per-acquisition figure has two descriptions. Footnote 1 attributes "up to 68%" to combined Brand+ and Performance+ campaigns in the U.S. in 2025, while footnote 3 attributes a 68% improvement to Performance+ for off-Amazon brands in Q4 2025 with a 14-day lookback window. Amazon does not say whether these are one measurement described twice or two results that happen to match.

The wording also shifts. The Key Benefits section says "up to 68%" and "up to 34%", while the section on why the product matters states a 34% higher ROAS and a 68% improvement without the qualifier.

None of the claims is labeled as a DVA+ result. The product is in closed beta, and the footnoted data dates from February 2025 to Q1 2026, with most of it attributed to Brand+ and Performance+ campaigns. The announcement nonetheless says such outcomes are what DVA+ delivers "from day one". Nor does the document state what the improvements are measured against: manual campaigns, earlier campaigns or a control group.

The last row raises a separate question. A ROAS gap between advertisers that used Campaign Guidance and those that did not compares groups, and Amazon does not say whether they were matched on size, spend or category, or whether any incrementality test was run. Advertisers that choose to use a planning tool may differ from those that do not in ways unrelated to the tool.

Amazon is not alone in publishing vendor-measured efficiency figures. The Trade Desk said Koa AI in Zuma cut CPAs 32% across 62 campaigns. Sample, period and baseline differ in each case, so the two numbers do not line up.

Access, billing and rollout

DVA+ is available today in extended closed beta in the United States, and the document lists North America: United States as the only region. Open beta is expected to begin in late October 2026, international expansion is planned through Q4 2026, and general availability across 35 markets is targeted for Q1 2027, according to Amazon. The 35 are not named. Eligibility depends on who is asking:

  • Sellers, vendors and off-Amazon brands with an Amazon Ads Agent account are eligible.
  • Advertisers with programmatic experience get both DVA+ and advanced settings.
  • New advertisers and Sponsored Ads advertisers get DVA+; advanced settings can be requested through an Amazon Ads account manager.
  • Agencies with existing entity access get full access to both experiences.

Arithmetic offers one reading of the 35. Amazon upgraded existing Amazon DSP accounts into a single advertiser account across 34 countries on July 30. On September 25 it opened the DSP console to five more locales, of which South Africa was the only one absent from the 34-country lists Amazon had used earlier in 2026. Thirty-four plus one makes 35. Amazon has not said that this is how the count was reached, and Brand+ and Performance+ themselves operate across roughly 34 markets.

Billing is narrower than the headline suggests. "Payment is invoice-only at closed beta," according to Amazon, with credit card support planned for Q1 2027. New advertisers are listed as eligible, yet card payment is unavailable to them until at least that quarter. So how open is "everyone" during the beta? The document does not say, and it is equally silent on fees and minimum spend. When Campaign Manager consolidated sponsored ads and Amazon DSP in November 2025, the DSP kept its existing minimum spend requirements, and whether DVA+ campaigns carry them is not stated.

Programmatic access is a further gap. Campaign creation is currently available through Amazon Ads Agent, and API access for Display, Video and Audio campaigns is "targeted for general availability in Q1 2027". The DSP Campaign Management APIs added an audio inventory type on June 11, 2026, and the document does not say how the planned DVA+ API relates to those endpoints. Amazon attached no dates to API details for Brand+ and Performance+ after the July release either.

Why this matters for the marketing community

Read against the period since November 2025, DVA+ is the newest layer in an effort to reduce the number of places where Amazon media is bought. Campaign Manager, Ads Agent and Creative Agent arrived in November 2025, a single global account followed on July 30, and the five-locale console expansion came on September 25. PPC Land's earlier analysis of Amazon's authenticated graph pitch framed it as a new pitch built mostly on old plumbing. Amazon now cites "over 300 million authenticated users" and calls its signals "signals unavailable anywhere else". The document does not say how users are counted or in which markets.

The commercial stakes are large. Amazon reported advertising services revenue of $19.8 billion for the second quarter of 2026, up 26%, and Guideline data put Amazon at 19% of global programmatic market share in the first quarter, up from under 10% about fifteen months earlier. A product that lowers the skill barrier to that inventory bears directly on how much of the remaining market moves.

The tension the announcement tries to manage is an old one. Practitioners discussing AI in ad buying in May 2026compared it with Performance Max, where advertisers that first welcomed full automation later asked for visibility into where budgets were going. Amazon's answer in DVA+ is reporting: domain-level visibility, by publisher, format and geography, into "exactly where every impression served". Yet the capability table places publisher inclusion and exclusion lists in advanced settings. In the default tier, visibility into placements is standard, while control over them is not.

Agencies are a second pressure point. Those with existing entity access get both experiences, according to Amazon, and "no DSP expertise required" describes the default tier, while advanced settings are aimed at buyers who have that expertise. An August analysis asked whether the agency is the next thing Amazon DSP removes after the single global login.

Creative is the third. Amazon's line on generated assets is categorical: "No creative team or production budget required." The document offers no performance data for the generated assets themselves; the 41% figure concerns combining formats.

Amazon lists late October 2026 for open beta. It gives no date for the drafts, bulk management and pre-flight validation features that it says are still rolling out.

Timeline

Summary

  • Who: Amazon Ads, addressing sellers, vendors, off-Amazon brands and agencies with Amazon Ads Agent accounts.
  • What: DVA+, a four-step flow inside Amazon Ads Agent for creating Display, Video and Audio campaigns, run by Brand+ and Performance+, with an advanced-settings tier for manual control.
  • When: Today (September 29, 2026), with open beta expected in late October 2026, international expansion through Q4 2026 and general availability across 35 markets targeted for Q1 2027.
  • Where: United States only, in extended closed beta, accessed through Amazon Ads Agent at advertising.amazon.com.
  • Why: Amazon says advertisers face growing complexity and fragmentation across the tools they need, and presents DVA+ as a way to spend less time operating campaigns and more time directing strategy. The performance figures offered in support come from Amazon's own data and predate DVA+.