Amazon DSP is the demand-side platform (DSP) that Amazon built to let advertisers buy display, video and audio ads automatically, on Amazon's own properties and across thousands of outside websites, apps and streaming services. A DSP is software that bids for ad space on the buyer's behalf. Amazon's version exists to sell one thing its rivals lack: audiences built from what hundreds of millions of people search for, buy and watch on Amazon. As of November 2026 the product name is formally retired. At its unBoxed conference on September 29, 2026, Amazon replaced "Amazon DSP" with DVA, short for display, video and audio, according to AdExchanger. The buying engine underneath is unchanged, and much of the industry still uses the old name.

How it works

Amazon describes the product as a way to "programmatically buy ads to reach new and existing audiences on Amazon or third-party destinations," according to its DSP guide.

An advertiser, or an agency acting for one, sets up an advertiser account. Since a change announced on July 30, 2026, that account is a single global entity covering 34 countries, replacing the old one-account-per-region structure. Inside it sit campaigns and ad groups (older versions of the interface used orders and line items), each carrying a budget, flight dates, a bid strategy, frequency caps and targeting.

Targeting is where Amazon differs from independent DSPs. Buyers pick from Amazon audiences built on what the company calls "unique browsing, shopping and streaming signals": in-market shoppers, lifestyle segments, people who viewed or bought a product, and lookalikes. Advertisers can also upload customer lists or build custom audiences in Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC), Amazon's clean room. Third-party segments sit alongside, such as Nielsen audience segments and Adelaide attention segments applied before the bid.

Supply comes from three pools. The first is Amazon-owned inventory: Prime Video, Twitch, Fire TV, IMDb, Amazon.com pages and, since June 2026, Alexa+ screens on Echo Show devices. The second is direct integrations with large media owners, including Netflix from the fourth quarter of 2025, Disney, Spotify and SiriusXM. The third is the open web, reached through supply-side platforms (SSPs) such as Microsoft Monetize.

Buying happens three ways, according to Amazon: real-time bidding (RTB) in open auctions, private marketplaces (PMPs) where a publisher invites selected buyers, and programmatic guaranteed (PG) deals with fixed price and volume. For an open-web impression, an SSP sends a bid request and Amazon's bidder checks it against active ad groups and audience membership before returning a price within milliseconds. Pricing is generally on a cost-per-thousand-impressions (CPM) basis. Auto deal selection now lets the system choose streaming TV deals itself.

Amazon offers two service models. Self-service carries "no management fees," according to Amazon. Managed service, where Amazon staff run campaigns, "typically requires a minimum spend of USD $50,000," with the threshold varying by country.

Reporting covers delivery, reach, frequency and viewability, alongside retail metrics that no independent DSP can produce natively: detail page view rate, add-to-cart, purchases and new-to-brand sales. Amazon's unified reports break results down by dimensions such as supply source, deal type, frequency group and audience segment; 85 of its 156 unified report dimensions apply to Sponsored Products.

The fee stack

What an advertiser pays splits into several layers. Supply cost is the price of the media itself. On top sit Amazon's platform fee, audience fees for Amazon or third-party data, and charges for third-party pre-bid tools. Amazon's agency fee methods, set out in a support page updated on November 11, 2026, make the layers visible: four of the five calculation methods are a percentage of supply cost, plus combinations of Amazon audience fees, total audience fees and third-party pre-bid fees. The fifth is a percentage of budget.

Amazon publishes no rate card for its platform fee, so the numbers come from reporting. Needham & Co put Amazon's fees at about 1%, against 12% to 15% for The Trade Desk, as PPC Land reported in its August 2025 analysis of the margin war. Digiday reported in October 2025 that typical fees ran between 4% and 8%, falling "as low as 1% and occasionally to zero" depending on spend and inventory. AdExchanger reported in November 2025 that Amazon charged nothing on PG deals for Amazon-owned media and 1% on open-web publishers, figures PPC Land collected in its coverage of the 34-country account merger. The figures do not agree.

Origin and evolution

The platform began life as the Amazon Advertising Platform (AAP). In an Advertiser Perceptions survey of 800 marketers published on March 30, 2017, 40% of respondents said they had spent through AAP the previous year, ahead of Google's DoubleClick Bid Manager at 36%, making it the most-used DSP in the sample, according to AdExchanger. "Amazon doesn't go out with great fanfare like other marketing engines do," Kevin Mannion, chief strategy officer at Advertiser Perceptions, told the publication.

In September 2018 Amazon merged Amazon Marketing Services, Amazon Media Group and AAP into one brand, Amazon Advertising, and AAP became Amazon DSP. Reports place the change on September 5 (AdExchanger) or September 6 (The Drum). In 2019 Amazon bought the Sizmek ad server and dynamic creative business out of bankruptcy. A Fire TV ads beta followed in November 2020, along with Prime Video audiences.

The bigger shift came when Amazon turned Prime Video into an ad-supported service and launched Prime Video ads, giving the DSP premium television inventory of its own. In 2025 Amazon opened the platform to outside streamers. A Roku partnership announced in June 2025 gave access to an estimated 80 million connected TV (CTV) households. Netflix was announced on September 10, 2025, for 11 markets. Paul Kotas, senior vice president at Amazon Ads, said the deal would "remove the guesswork for advertisers by making it simple to manage all of their TV planning and buying with Amazon Ads."

Microsoft's decision on May 14, 2025, to sunset its Xandr DSP by February 28, 2026, pushed more buyers towards Amazon. In November 2025 Amazon merged its DSP and the sponsored ads console into one Campaign Manager, a step that led directly to the September 2026 rebrand.

Why it matters for marketers

For marketers the attraction is closed-loop data. An ad shown on a news site or a Netflix episode can be tied to a later purchase on Amazon, a link that DSPs without a retail business cannot draw from their own records. A global car brand moved about $80 million a year from The Trade Desk to Amazon, Adweek reported on June 5, 2025. Jeff Green, The Trade Desk's chief executive, said in August 2025: "I think Amazon is more of a potential partner, honestly, than it is a long-term competitor."

Amazon's advertising revenue reached $17.7 billion in the third quarter of 2025, up 22% year on year, though Amazon does not report DSP revenue separately.

Limitations and criticisms

The central objection is that Amazon owns much of the inventory, supplies the audience data and reports the sales credited to the ads. Third-party verification exists, including IAS accreditation from the Media Rating Council (MRC), but retail attribution remains largely Amazon's own.

Measurement itself has shifted. From January 1, 2027, display impressions on Amazon Store placements will count only once an ad appears on screen, rather than when it downloads. Amazon expects counts to fall by about 63% on average, implying most impressions counted there until now were never seen.

Pricing on Amazon's sponsored ads products is the subject of an August 2026 lawsuit, in which the FTC and 22 states allege hidden auction surcharges; the complaint concerns sponsored ads rather than the DSP, and Amazon disputes it. The rebrand added confusion. "I'm still not 100% clear," Destaney Wishon, chief executive of btr media, wrote on LinkedIn after the announcement, as PPC Land reported in October 2026.

What Amazon DSP is not

  • Sponsored Display. A self-service, mostly cost-per-click format bought in the sponsored ads console, aimed at product sales. It required no DSP access. Digiday reported that DVA+ now consolidates Sponsored Display, Sponsored TV and programmatic buying.
  • Amazon Ads Agent. The conversational interface Amazon relaunched in September 2026 to cover its whole buying platform. PPC Land noted that Amazon DSP did not become Ads Agent: the buying product became DVA, and Ads Agent is the layer on top.
  • Amazon Marketing Cloud. The clean room that feeds the DSP audiences and analysis but buys no media.
  • Delivery Service Partner. In Amazon logistics, "DSP" also means the contractors running last-mile delivery vans, an unrelated business.

Recent developments

Three changes define the platform as of November 2026. First, the four-step DVA+ campaign builder, launched in US closed beta on September 29, 2026, asks for an objective, products or a brand URL, creative approval and a budget, then hands targeting, inventory and bidding to Amazon's software, with an advanced tier keeping manual controls. General availability in 35 markets is targeted for the first quarter of 2027, alongside a DVA campaign API. Amazon claims up to 68% better cost per acquisition and 34% higher return on ad spend, figures it labels as internal data rather than DVA+ results.

Second, agencies face a deadline. The legacy campaign-level agency fee can be set until January 31, 2027, and will be removed by the end of March 2027, replaced by manager-account fees applied at account, campaign or ad group level.

Third, the inventory keeps widening beyond Amazon's walls, from ads inside ChatGPT in a pilot with Delta Vacations to self-service lift studies from more than 50 vendors. Kelly MacLean, vice president of science, engineering and product at Amazon Ads, told AdExchanger the company now has "the simplest experience in the industry."

Timeline

  • March 30, 2017 - Advertiser Perceptions survey ranks the Amazon Advertising Platform as the most-used DSP, at 40% of 800 respondents.
  • September 2018 - Amazon merges AMS, Amazon Media Group and AAP into Amazon Advertising; AAP becomes Amazon DSP.
  • June 2019 - Amazon agrees to buy the Sizmek ad server and DCO business.
  • November 2020 - Fire TV ads beta launches through Amazon DSP.
  • May 14, 2025 - Microsoft announces the end of its Xandr DSP, effective February 28, 2026.
  • June 2025 - Roku partnership announced, reaching an estimated 80 million CTV households.
  • September 10, 2025 - Netflix inventory announced for Amazon DSP in 11 markets from Q4 2025.
  • October 1, 2025 - Spotify audio and video inventory added in nine markets.
  • October 7, 2025 - Microsoft Monetize integrated as a preferred SSP.
  • November 2025 - Amazon DSP and the sponsored ads console merge into Campaign Manager.
  • July 30, 2026 - Single global advertiser account across 34 countries announced.
  • September 29, 2026 - Amazon retires the Amazon DSP name in favour of DVA, relaunches Ads Agent and puts DVA+ into US closed beta.
  • November 11, 2026 - Amazon updates its agency fee support page, setting the legacy fee deadline.
  • January 1, 2027 - On-screen impression counting begins for DVA display ads on the Amazon Store.
  • January 31, 2027 - Last day to set the legacy campaign-level agency fee.
  • Q1 2027 - Targeted general availability of DVA+ in 35 markets.

Summary

  • Who: Amazon Ads operates the platform; advertisers, brands selling on and off Amazon, and agencies buy through it; media owners such as Netflix, Disney, Roku, Spotify and SiriusXM supply inventory alongside SSPs such as Microsoft Monetize; competitors include The Trade Desk and Google's Display & Video 360.
  • What: A demand-side platform for programmatic display, video and audio buying that uses Amazon shopping and streaming data for targeting and measurement, renamed DVA in September 2026.
  • When: It began as the Amazon Advertising Platform, ranked as the most-used DSP in a 2017 survey, became Amazon DSP in September 2018, merged with sponsored ads tools in November 2025 and lost its name on September 29, 2026, with DVA+ general availability targeted for Q1 2027.
  • Where: Across Amazon properties such as Prime Video, Twitch, Fire TV and Amazon.com, on partner streaming services and the open web, with a single advertiser account covering 34 countries.
  • Why: It lets advertisers reach audiences defined by real purchase behaviour and tie ads to sales, at platform fees reported to be well below independent rivals, while raising questions about Amazon marking its own homework.