Amazon Ads introduced Branded Conversations and Sponsored Services at its unBoxed 2026 event, according to the company’s recap published September 30. Both put ads inside conversational shopping experiences.
Branded Conversations let brands supply information for Alexa for Shopping to use when a shopper clicks a prompt such as “Help me build a daily routine”. Amazon’s example is a skin care brand explaining which cleanser suits oily skin, which suits sensitive skin and which suits beginners, along with complementary products. Muthu Muthukrishnan, Vice President of Sponsored Products and Brands, said brands need to stay in the conversation.
Sponsored Services connects shoppers with local service providers on Amazon. Amazon says it extends its closed loop to local services for the first time, with Yelp as the anchor partner for home and local services. Muthukrishnan said the ad “is conversational and agentic, focusing on the details specific to that service, and it completes the task directly.”
Why it matters
These formats move the advertiser’s job from writing a headline to supplying the answers a shopper’s questions will draw on. Amazon’s example puts product comparisons and complementary items into the ad itself. Product information becomes the main input.
It continues a trend we covered in Ad Tech Is Moving Into the Chat Window and in AI Chat Ads Inherit the Web’s Old Tracking Fight.
The original insight
Conversation ads change what gets reviewed. A static ad can be approved once. A brand’s answers will be read out in response to questions nobody wrote in advance. Before supplying product claims to a conversational format, have legal and product teams sign off on the underlying fact sheet, and ask what Amazon shows you about the conversations where your information was used. Amazon’s recap does not say what reporting advertisers get for these formats, so confirm that before committing budget.
Source: Amazon Ads
