How Amazon Ads partners are navigating the shifting advertising landscape in 2026

As we get settled into 2026, it's become clear that the organizations getting ahead in the ever-evolving advertising landscape are moving fast and adapting in real time. As artificial intelligence (AI) moves from experimental to essential, with the connective tissue between commerce and content becoming stronger by the day, and streaming TV measurement evolving to fit the needs of the modern marketer, we looked at what five Amazon Ads partners and industry leaders are seeing on the ground today. Their insights reveal not just where advertising is headed, but where the smartest brands are already investing.

Ryan Craver

Co-Founder and Chief Strategy and AI Officer, Podean

The evolution from performance optimization to creative optimization marks a significant turning point. Advertisers are using AI to dynamically adjust messaging, format, and imagery based on audience intent across the media landscape. The focus is less on automation and more on adaptive creativity—training models on brand-specific language, tone, and assets to scale storytelling without sacrificing authenticity.

This shift is changing how advertisers use AI—moving beyond optimization to conversational media planning and buying. In this model, natural language prompts replace traditional media briefs. AI systems translate conversational inputs into dynamic targeting, creative, and placement decisions. Marketers can now define audiences, outcomes, and tone of voice through conversation, with the same structure powering both strategy and execution.

Daniel Knijnik

CEO, Quartile

The largest and most consistent growth this year will belong to brands that treat digital advertising as the control center for streaming, search, and offsite marketing—not just a conversion point.

Shopping data is showing up in conversations well beyond the point of sale. Streaming, video, and offsite media are increasingly informed by real shopping behavior, not assumptions about intent. As commerce, channels, and content continue to converge, shopping signals serve as the center of gravity for modern marketing decisions.

For advertisers, this calls for a more disciplined approach: defining and targeting audiences based on real behavior, using those insights consistently across media such as streaming TV, and adjusting spend and creative as signals change. Brands that understand who their audiences are, how those audiences behave over time, and how to stay relevant as they move across screens and formats will see the strongest results.

Joe Shelerud

CEO and Co-Founder, Ad Advance

The transition from linear to digital represents more than a simple budget reallocation—it signals a fundamental shift in advertiser expectations. As more investment flows into streaming, digital video, and offsite media, brands now expect the same precision, accountability, and connectivity across every supply source that they've come to expect from digital channels.

What's particularly notable is how quickly industry conversations have evolved from discussing where ads run to examining how impressions work together. Advertisers want to deliver the right message to the right audience at the right moment—and critically, understand how those touchpoints perform collectively rather than in isolation.

This is driving demand for advanced targeting paired with holistic measurement that spans owned-and-operated as well as third-party inventory. Advanced targeting and holistic measurement are becoming the baseline expectation across all media, not a differentiator.

John Shea

Head of Commerce, PMG

In 2026, we will see a dramatic reduction in the average time from inspiration to purchase across nearly every shopping category. As purchase timelines compress, brands need to change the way they treat awareness, consideration, and conversion. Connecting those together as part of a measurable, full-funnel strategy needs to be a priority.

Over the past two decades, the customer journey followed a predictable path—awareness, consideration, conversion—with each stage treated separately. That gap between discovery and purchase is now compressing quickly, and brands that continue treating these stages in isolation will struggle to keep pace.

In this environment, advertisers need to use data in a much more cohesive way to minimize wasted impressions, optimize frequency, and drive measurable performance across the entire journey.

A truism of marketing has historically been that 95% of consumers are not in-market for your products at any given time. As purchase timelines compress, that out-of-market window may widen further—making it even more critical for brands to invest aggressively in upper-funnel formats and premium inventory to stay present and relevant when the moment to buy arrives.

Alasdair McLean-Foreman

CEO & Founder, Teikametrics

AI is no longer living at the edges of advertising as a bidding or optimization tool. It's functioning as the operating system for full-funnel growth inside Amazon Ads.

The real shift is AI replacing fragmented, manual decision-making with a unified layer that connects planning, creative, media execution, and measurement across streaming TV, sponsored ads, Amazon DSP, and Amazon Marketing Cloud. Success depends on systems that can reason across touchpoints—deciding what to launch, where to invest, how to sequence exposure, and when to pull back.

In this environment, manual handoffs between funnel stages become a liability. The imperative now is to audit where human judgment still acts as the "glue" between funnel stages and determine which decisions should be replaced by AI-driven logic, and where human expertise still adds differentiated value.