The news: Amazon Ads has unveiled a new agentic AI tool inside its Creative Studio, positioning it as a real-time creative partner for advertisers.
- Through a conversational interface, brands can brainstorm ideas, generate storyboards, and produce professional-quality video and display ads in hours instead of weeks—at no extra cost.
- The tool draws on Amazon’s extensive retail insights, combining shopper signals with product pages, brand stores, and websites to craft ads designed to resonate with customers.
- Advertisers can refine every stage of the process, from tagline generation to scene-level scripts, with final outputs including multi-scene videos complete with animations, music, and voiceovers.
- Powered by AWS models like Amazon Nova and Anthropic Claude, the system is designed to democratize high-quality creative development once limited to big-budget brands.
Amazon already offers complementary AI-powered creative products, including its Video, Audio, and Image Generators, and is embedding ads into AI assistant Rufus. The broader aim is to automate ad creation, expand reach beyond retail traffic, and make discovery central as search behavior shifts.
The push goes beyond speed; Amazon says it’s about giving all advertisers access to strategic creative support. Early testers like Nestlé Health Science and BTR Media praised the tool for surfacing new insights and enabling mid-market clients to scale campaigns in ways previously impossible, Amazon said.
Why it matters: It’s not just Amazon looking to scale automated ad creative. By 2026, Meta plans to let advertisers fully automate campaigns. Brands will upload products and budgets, and Meta’s AI will generate everything—visuals, copy, and personalized targeting by age, location, and engagement.
For small firms, this means affordable campaigns; for larger brands, it promises speed but raises concerns about consistency and creative control. Regardless, Meta is already making progress towards its automation goals.
AI everywhere: AI ad creation is expanding across Big Tech and beyond to other industries. Google is building AI ad creation tools, and Comcast is rolling out free AI-powered features for streaming ads. Luxury brands like Gucci, LVMH, and L’Oréal are already experimenting with in-house AI tools, further reducing reliance on agencies. According to InMarket data, 43% of US marketers are already using AI for campaign optimization, and 41% are using it for audience targeting, underscoring how entrenched automation has become.
The stakes are huge; Agencies risk being bypassed as advertisers shift to in-house, platform-run tools—a fear underscored when WPP, Publicis, and Omnicom shares fell 3% to 4% after Meta automation news broke in June. Agencies still have value, but those that survive agencies will need to pivot toward brand strategy, orchestration, and insight-led ideas—areas AI can’t yet replicate.
The bottom line: Big Tech is reshaping advertising by giving brands faster, cheaper, and more precise tools. AI promises efficiency and scale, but the question is whether agencies can redefine their value as guardians of creativity, strategy, and brand storytelling in an increasingly automated ad market.