Amazon Ads today announced Sponsored Services, an ad format that places local service professionals in front of shoppers right after a purchase or a search for something that may need installation or follow-on work, according to Amazon Ads. Yelp supplies the businesses, and the format is available today for Yelp advertisers in eligible home and auto services categories in the U.S.

In Short

Amazon today began showing ads for local service businesses, such as plumbers, to shoppers who have just bought something that might need installing. The ads come from businesses that already advertise on Yelp, and a shopper can phone the business or ask for a price estimate without leaving Amazon. The format is live only in the U.S. and only for certain home and auto service categories.

Where the ads appear and how they work

According to Amazon Ads, Sponsored Services ads run on product detail pages, order confirmation pages and package tracking pages. All three are onsite placements, meaning advertising sold inside Amazon's own shopping pages rather than on outside websites. The company's example is a shopper who buys a kitchen faucet and then sees an ad for a local plumber on the order confirmation page.

Each ad carries two actions. Call connects the shopper to the professional by phone, and according to Amazon Ads the shopper does not leave Amazon to make the call. Quote lets the shopper submit a short request from within the ad experience, after which the plumber follows up with an estimate.

The trigger is worth noting. Most local service advertising is bought against a search query, such as an emergency plumber near a postcode. Here the trigger is a retail transaction, or a search that suggests one may be coming. Amazon Ads describes the timing as the "exact moment" a shopper needs a service, and says the format combines "Amazon's shopping signals with trusted local providers". The announcement does not say which signals are used, how a purchase maps to a service category, or how local matching is done.

Jenn Donohue, Director, Local Ads at Amazon Ads, said the aim is "easier than ever" access for local businesses to grow and for shoppers to find support, according to the announcement.

The Yelp side

Amazon Ads is working with Yelp, according to the announcement, which describes the platform as connecting people with local businesses. Amazon Ads says Yelp's millions of local businesses are backed by more than 300 million reviews, and that shoppers can reach highly rated professionals including plumbers, electricians, landscapers, home cleaners, roofers and movers.

Katy Lightsey, Head of Services Operations at Yelp, said the arrangement brings Yelp to shoppers "at the point of purchase", according to Yelp. She added that for service professionals it means "turning everyday purchases into real jobs".

Most of the professions on that list are service-area businesses, which serve customers across a territory rather than from a single shop front. For such firms, the practical question is where a lead originates. Sponsored Services adds one more origin point, and it sits outside search and directory listings.

Amazon's local advertising record so far

The announcement places Sponsored Services within a run of local and regional products. According to Amazon Ads, two recent examples are location-based interactive video ads and Geographic Insights and Activation, known as GIA.

The first lets advertisers vary streaming creative by geography, showing regional offers, local pricing or nearby store information within one campaign. Interactive calls to action such as "Send to Phone" are part of the format, according to Amazon Ads. Amazon Ads announced the format for Prime Video on October 31, 2025, initially in the United States only, and extended it to Canada, Mexico and Brazil on July 21, 2026.

The second, GIA, uses Amazon's first-party retail signals to find regions with growth potential. Amazon Ads announced it on June 23, 2025 as a feature for Amazon DSP, developed with industry partners including WPP Media and Choreograph.

Both of those products serve brands with a national footprint that wish to speak locally. Sponsored Services differs in kind. Its advertisers are small and regional by definition, and the audience is defined by a transaction rather than a place.

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A relationship that predates the ad format

Amazon and Yelp are not new to each other. Amazon announced on December 23, 2025 that Yelp and Angi would be integrated into Alexa+ for home services, alongside Expedia and Square, so that hotel bookings, home services and wellness appointments could be handled by voice. The earlier arrangement concerned booking through an assistant. The new one concerns advertising on the shopping pages.

For Yelp, the timing coincides with a flat Services line. In its second quarter, reported on August 6, 2026, Services advertising revenue was $240.96 million, 0.1% above the prior year and below the $243.81 million recorded in the third quarter of 2025. Paying Services locations averaged 259,000, against 260,000 a year earlier. Services had been the segment carrying Yelp for roughly three years, according to that reporting. Yelp had also agreed in January 2026 to buy Hatch for about $270 million in cash, a lead management company for service businesses.

Amazon's position is different. The company reported advertising services revenue of $19.8 billion for the second quarter of 2026, up 26%. A partner that brings a new category of advertiser onto Amazon's pages adds inventory demand without Amazon building a services marketplace of its own.

What the announcement does not say

The source material is a short product announcement, and several details that a buyer or an analyst would ask about are absent:

  • The pricing model. The announcement does not state whether advertisers pay per call, per quote request, per click or per impression.
  • The buying route. It says the format is available for Yelp advertisers, but does not describe whether campaigns are set up in Yelp's tools, in Amazon's, or through both.
  • Targeting and matching logic, including which purchases or searches qualify.
  • Measurement, such as whether calls and quote requests are reported back to advertisers and how they are attributed.
  • Geographic granularity within the U.S., and the definition of "eligible" home and auto services categories.
  • Any performance data from testing.

Why it matters to the marketing community

Amazon sells advertising against shopper behaviour it holds itself, the model PPC Land has described as commerce media. Until now that model has mostly served brands and sellers of physical goods. Sponsored Services extends it to businesses that sell labour, and it does so at a moment when the shopper has just proved an intention to buy something that needs fitting.

The alternatives for local service advertisers are mainly pay-per-lead. Google's Local Services Ads bill per qualified lead rather than per click. A notice sent to advertisers on August 24, 2026 set out that unanswered calls of more than 20 seconds become billable from October 1, 2026. A format that arrives on Amazon two days before that change adds a second large surface where phone calls are the product. Whether Sponsored Services follows a similar per-lead logic is not stated.

There is also a measurement question that applies to any post-purchase ad. A shopper who has bought a faucet may already have a plumber, and a call button placed on the confirmation page cannot show whether the job would have happened anyway. The announcement supplies no figures on that.

For publishers and platforms in the local search space, the announcement is a data point on where service leads may be sourced. For agencies managing Yelp budgets, it adds an Amazon placement to a channel that had been sold mainly on Yelp's own search results. The scale of the effect will depend on details that were not disclosed today.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Amazon Ads, which announced the format, and Yelp, which supplies the local businesses. The named spokespeople are Jenn Donohue, Director, Local Ads at Amazon Ads, and Katy Lightsey, Head of Services Operations at Yelp.

What: Sponsored Services, a new ad format showing local service professionals on Amazon product detail pages, order confirmation pages and package tracking pages, with Call and Quote actions handled inside the ad experience.

When: Announced today, September 29, 2026, at unBoxed, and available now.

Where: Amazon's shopping pages in the U.S., for Yelp advertisers in eligible home and auto services categories.

Why: Amazon Ads says the aim is to reach shoppers at the moment they need a service and to help local businesses convert everyday purchases into jobs. The announcement does not disclose pricing, measurement or performance data.