Ten capabilities arrived across Amazon's two automated campaign products on July 22, 2026, moving audio to general availability in 16 locales, opening first-party audience data as a model input at no charge, and stripping the single-deal default out of new streaming television lines.

Amazon Ads published a launch announcement on July 22, 2026 setting out ten new capabilities for Brand+ and Performance+, the two automated campaign products that sit inside Amazon DSP. According to the announcement, the features had launched as of July 20 or were scheduled to arrive over the following weeks, entering either Open Beta or general availability. The document groups them under three headings: simplicity, scale, and performance.

The framing is control. Amazon presents the bundle as a way for advertisers to guide automated optimization rather than surrender to it. Four of the ten features, however, switch on by default and require no advertiser action at all.

Advertiser data becomes a model input, not a targeting cap

Two of the ten capabilities concern first-party data. Audience Signals for Brand+ entered Open Beta for Prospecting campaigns. Audience Signals for Performance+ entered Open Beta for the Customer Acquisition and Unified Consideration tactics.

Both route advertiser data through Ads Data Manager, the standalone platform Amazon documented in a technical walkthrough on May 1, 2026 as the layer connecting first-party data to Amazon DSP, Amazon Marketing Cloud, and Events Manager. Advertisers upload hashed customer lists through Ads Data Manager and activate them as advertiser audiences, or build custom segments in Amazon Marketing Cloud. The audiences are then added inside the Audience section of line item settings.

The distinction Amazon draws is technical and consequential. According to the announcement, the audiences function as optimization inputs and not as hard targeting constraints, in the same way conversion event data is already used. The stated effect is that the models identify high-value customers faster while retaining freedom to discover users outside the supplied segments. A targeting constraint caps deliverable reach; an optimization input biases a bidder toward a pattern. The two behave differently on a delivery report, and the difference is not directly observable from an advertiser console.

There is no additional fee for including Audience Signals. Audience exclusions remain available and, according to Amazon, operate independently of the new inputs, meaning suppression lists are not folded into the same mechanism.

The move fits a wider pattern of lowering the cost of moving proprietary data into Amazon systems. The company made Amazon 1P paid feature signals free to query in Amazon Marketing Cloud through December 31, 2026, covering both audience creation and measurement. It also set a June 30, 2026 consent deadline for advertisers transmitting data in the United Kingdom and European Economic Area, a requirement that applies to the same Ads Data Manager pipeline now feeding Brand+ and Performance+.

Audio reaches general availability across 16 locales

Audio for Brand+ moved to general availability, building on an Open Beta that opened in April 2026. The change adds third-party exchange open exchange supply alongside existing first-party inventory and third-party Amazon Publisher Direct sources.

Coverage is uneven. Nine locales carry combined first-party and third-party supply: the United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, and France. Seven carry third-party supply only: Australia, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. That is 16 locales in total, against the roughly 34 markets where Brand+ and Performance+ otherwise operate.

Audio for Performance+ entered Open Beta separately, and for the first time brings automated audio buying to mid-funnel and lower-funnel tactics: Customer Acquisition, Remarketing, Retention, Consideration, and Search.

The technical requirements are restrictive. Audio creatives must be submitted as MP3 or WAV files in 30-second or 15-second spots through the Amazon Ads creative workflow. Display companion creatives are required on every audio line item. Performance+ audio lines must include at least one third-party inventory source. Guaranteed deals are not permitted on Performance+ audio at all; only non-guaranteed deals are supported.

One absence is explicit. Amazon states that podcasts are not yet available for Brand+ or Performance+. That gap sits awkwardly beside the supply the company has been accumulating. Amazon DSP added Spotify's global audio and video inventory across nine markets on October 1, 2025, integrated SiriusXM Media's streaming portfolio through AdsWizz in September 2025, opened iHeartMedia's owned inventory including podcasts to DSP buyers on June 29, 2026, and added Triton Digital supply across more than 80 country marketplaces on July 21, 2026. The inventory is in the platform. The automated products cannot yet buy the podcast portion of it.

Automatic Deal Selection removes the single-deal default

The most operationally significant change affects streaming television. Automatic Deal Selection for Brand+ STV entered Open Beta as a feature that activates and optimizes a group of premium streaming deals automatically, selected using Brand+ audience context alongside campaign targeting dimensions.

Nicole Goksel, senior product manager - technical at Amazon Ads, described the shift in a LinkedIn post. "Previously, Brand+ campaigns ran on a single, pre-configured deal," she wrote. According to Goksel, new Brand+ lines now receive "a continuously optimized set of deals across Amazon and the open internet," refreshed as deal performance data arrives.

Amazon states the feature is enabled by default on new Brand+ STV Prospecting lines and requires no manual activation. For media buyers, that inverts the default: deal selection on a new prospecting line becomes something to opt out of rather than something to specify.

The two available sources disagree on geography. The July 22 launch announcement lists Automatic Deal Selection for Brand+ STV as available in the United States only. Goksel's post states that Automatic Deal Selection was integrated into Brand+ during the second quarter and is enabled by default on new Brand+ STV Prospecting lines across the Americas. Her post also describes a separate expansion outside Brand+, dated July 1, taking Automatic Deal Selection from Awareness STV in the United States alone to Awareness STV and online video across the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Brazil. Amazon has not published a reconciliation of the two descriptions.

The mechanism resembles what Amazon has been building on the supply side. Amazon Publisher Cloud introduced Outcome Optimizer on June 19, 2026, applying shopping, browsing, and streaming signals to programmatic guaranteed deals inside FreeWheel's ad server, with tests showing a 33% improvement in on-target reach. Automatic Deal Selection applies comparable logic from the buy side.

Four model changes that switch on without advertiser action

The remaining performance features operate in the background.

Brand Outcome Optimization entered Open Beta and is enabled by default on Reach goal lines for all Brand+ advertisers. It predicts the likelihood that a user takes a brand-relevant action, specifically branded search, detail page views, and add-to-cart, across Display, online video, streaming television, and audio. The change moves Brand+ past a reach-only optimization target toward measurable downstream behaviour.

Prime Video Signal Integration also entered Open Beta and is enabled by default for Prime Video Ads supply. Streaming behaviour data enriches Brand+ ranking, which Amazon frames as improved ad relevancy.

Asynchronous Remarketing for Performance+ reached general availability for the Remarketing and Retention tactics. The upgrade supplies richer match-context signals at bid time, covering recency, frequency, and dwell time.

Expanded Conversion Support for App Ads reached general availability. Performance+ Remarketing now accepts "Other" conversion types sourced from Mobile Measurement Partners, which unlocks the tactic for non-endemic app advertisers that do not sell products on Amazon.

Three of these four are default-on. That sits in tension with a launch announcement built around advertiser control, and it repeats a pattern the industry has seen before. Analysis published by PPC Land in May 2026 recorded practitioners drawing an explicit Performance Max analogy, noting that advertisers initially welcomed full automation from Googleand then began requesting visibility into where budgets were going.

Managed service gains a planning workflow, API details lag

The Managed Service Campaign Proposal Builder reached general availability, making Brand+ and Performance+ accessible to Amazon Media Group managed service entities for the first time, through existing media planning workflows. Access runs through Amazon sales contacts rather than self-service signup.

All ten capabilities are available through the Amazon Ads campaign creation interface. API coverage is a different matter. According to the announcement, API support details will be communicated separately through technical documentation updates as applicable, with programmatic advertisers directed to the Performance+ and Brand+ wiki for endpoint documentation. No dates were attached to that commitment.

That gap has precedent at Amazon. The company has repeatedly shipped features to the console ahead of the API, and has also used extended beta periods before declaring general availability, as it did when Brand Stores management APIsexited beta in February 2026 after an accessible but unfinished June 2025 release.

Where the features work

Brand+ and Performance+ operate across roughly 34 markets in five regions. North America covers the United States, Canada, and Mexico. South America covers Brazil. Europe spans Germany, Spain, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Switzerland, Poland, Turkey, Austria, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Ireland, Denmark, and Luxembourg. Middle East availability includes Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Israel, Egypt, Morocco, Bahrain, and Kuwait. Asia Pacific covers Australia, India, Japan, China, New Zealand, and Singapore.

Two features carry narrower footprints: audio across the 16 locales listed above, and Automatic Deal Selection for Brand+ STV in the United States according to the launch page.

Uneven rollouts are standard for the platform. Amazon took nine months to move zip code level Prime Video targetingbeyond the United States, adding Canada, Mexico, and Brazil in July 2026. By contrast, benchmarks reporting went from one market to 18 in a single May 18, 2026 release.

Why this matters for the marketing community

The commercial backdrop is a business growing faster than its peers. Amazon's advertising services segment generated $17.2 billion in the first quarter of 2026, up 24% year on year, with trailing twelve-month revenue crossing $70 billion. Guideline data covering the same quarter showed four demand-side platforms holding 85% of programmatic spend, with Amazon nearly doubling its share over 15 months.

For agencies and in-house teams, the practical significance of Audience Signals is migration cost. Teams that spent years constructing Amazon Marketing Cloud audiences, data management platform segments, or custom cohorts previously faced a choice between those assets and automated products that did not accept them. The new inputs remove that trade-off, at no fee, which lowers the barrier to shifting budget into Brand+ and Performance+ without discarding existing targeting work.

The trade-off runs the other way on streaming television. A buyer who previously specified a deal on a Brand+ STV prospecting line now gets an optimized set chosen by the system unless action is taken. Supply path control, curation preferences, and negotiated deal terms all sit inside that decision. Amazon's stated benefit is incremental reach and access to a broader premium pool spanning its own properties and the open internet. Whether the optimized set outperforms a hand-picked deal is measurable only after the fact, and the reporting granularity available for that comparison has not been specified.

Audio is the clearest expansion of addressable inventory. Programmatic audio buying through Amazon DSP has grown through partnerships rather than owned inventory, and the API gained audio campaign support in June 2026. Bringing automated optimization to lower-funnel audio tactics gives performance buyers a channel that was previously an awareness-only line item, though the mandatory display companion creative and the ban on guaranteed deals in Performance+ audio impose production and planning constraints that will not suit every campaign.

The control question remains open. Amazon has supplied advertisers with a new input and simultaneously removed a decision they used to make. Both changes appear in the same announcement.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Amazon Ads, addressing advertisers and agencies running Brand+ and Performance+ campaigns through Amazon DSP, plus Amazon Media Group managed service entities. Nicole Goksel, senior product manager - technical at Amazon Ads, described the Automatic Deal Selection integration publicly on LinkedIn.

What: Ten new capabilities across the two automated campaign products. Audience Signals for Brand+ and Performance+ entered Open Beta, allowing first-party audiences uploaded via Ads Data Manager to act as optimization inputs at no additional fee. Audio for Brand+ reached general availability with third-party exchange supply added; Audio for Performance+ entered Open Beta across five mid- and lower-funnel tactics. Automatic Deal Selection for Brand+ STV entered Open Beta, enabled by default on new prospecting lines. The Managed Service Campaign Proposal Builder reached general availability. Four model and signal upgrades - brand outcome optimization, Prime Video signal integration, asynchronous remarketing, and expanded conversion support for app ads - operate without advertiser action.

When: The launch announcement was published on July 22, 2026, stating that the capabilities had launched as of July 20 or would arrive over the following weeks. Audio for Brand+ began its Open Beta in April 2026. Automatic Deal Selection was integrated into Brand+ during the second quarter of 2026 and expanded outside Brand+ on July 1, 2026.

Where: Brand+ and Performance+ operate across roughly 34 markets spanning North America, South America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia Pacific. Audio covers 16 locales, nine with combined first-party and third-party supply and seven with third-party supply only. The launch announcement lists Automatic Deal Selection for Brand+ STV as United States only, while Goksel's LinkedIn post describes availability across the Americas. All ten features are accessed through the Amazon Ads campaign creation interface; API documentation is to follow separately.

Why: Amazon's advertising segment reached $17.2 billion in the first quarter of 2026, growing 24% year on year and crossing $70 billion on a trailing twelve-month basis, and the company is competing for programmatic budgets beyond its own retail environment. Opening first-party audiences as optimization inputs at no fee lowers the barrier for teams with existing Amazon Marketing Cloud or data management platform segments to move budget into automated products. At the same time, removing the single-deal default on new streaming television prospecting lines and switching on three background model changes by default shifts decisions from the buyer to the system, which is the tension running through an announcement built on the language of advertiser control.