Amazon unBoxed 2026: The Future of Retail Media and What’s New for 2027

Amazon unveiled the key innovations set to transform advertising on its platform next year at its annual unBoxed 2026 event. The vision for 2027 marks a real paradigm shift: Amazon is dramatically narrowing the gap between what businesses want to achieve and how this is executed in media. The message is clear: when advanced execution reaches more advertisers and becomes accessible to everyone, executing well stops being the real differentiator. At Kiliagon, we have taken an in-depth look at the event’s announcements. Here is everything we saw and what it means for brand strategies.

The 4 Pillars That Will Drive Amazon in 2027

Next year will be shaped by four key drivers that will take the platform beyond simply adding new features:

• Branded Conversations: Product discovery is changing, moving from traditional keywords to guided conversations around users’ needs.
• Ads Agent: Advertisers will be able to manage advertising planning, building, optimization and analysis through natural language.
• DVA+: Campaigns start directly from the advertiser’s objective, and Artificial Intelligence manages execution across display, video and audio channels.
• Full-Funnel Campaigns (Integrated): Planning and activation move closer together and focus on real business objectives, moving away from isolated campaign mechanics.

The Paradigm Shift: From Executors to “Directors”

This alignment between objectives and execution has profound implications for everyone involved:

• For the Shopper (From Search to Conversation): A guided dialogue is added, in which the platform shows relevant products based on conversations. In this context, Product Detail Pages (PDPs), Brand Stores and reviews become essential assets that help AI understand your product in depth.
• For the Advertiser (From Building to Directing): There will be less manual work and more human direction through strategic prompts. A campaign starts with an instruction: the advertiser defines the objective, context, budget and limits, and the system executes accordingly.
• For Measurement (From KPIs to Business Outcomes): The target metric you choose becomes the direct objective pursued by AI. Real business objectives guide the algorithm, and the brand must define what success truly means for the business and which operational limits must never be crossed.

Next Steps: How Brands Can Maintain Their Competitive Edge

The easier it becomes for the platform to execute campaigns well, the more crucial the inputs we provide become. Competitive advantage starts with exactly what we give AI: what it knows about the brand, which signals it receives and which objective it pursues. Here is what brands need to focus on today:

• Brand Truth: Audit what AI knows about your brand. Ask yourself: would Amazon really understand why, when and to whom it should recommend your products? AI is only as good as the signals you provide, such as your positioning and your real business targets.
• Signals: Treat your first-party audiences, conversion data and customer value as primary inputs for optimization.
• Objective: Define the business objective before the media KPI, so it influences the algorithm’s entire optimization process, rather than focusing only on ROAS.
• Guardrails and Strategic Judgment: When AI executes, someone must set clear limits. The advantage lies in deciding what AI can recommend, what it can execute on its own and what requires human approval. Also, because Amazon will inevitably optimize its own channels, your brand needs cross-retailer judgment and an independent overall view to understand where it creates the most value.

Conclusions

The future of advertising on Amazon is taking shape: the platform will optimize the metric, but the winning brand will be the one that can define true success and know when to challenge AI. Is your strategy ready for this shift?