From Buzzwords to Better Work: What Our Team Learned at unBoxed 2025

By The Bluebird Group Retail Media Team

After unBoxed, our team took time to unpack the announcements together. These are the insights that stood out, the questions we debated, and the lessons we think every brand should carry into 2026. Every year, Amazon’s unBoxed sets the tone for where retail media is heading. This year in Nashville, the message was unmistakable. AI is no longer the future of advertising. It’s already here and about to change everything about how we work together.

But what stood out most was not the technology itself. It was how human it all felt when put in the right hands. This year was about connection between tools, between teams, and between tactics. Amazon is simplifying the path from idea to impact, and that shift is what will define 2026.

A Unified Platform for a Unified Era

Amazon’s biggest announcement was its newly revamped unified advertising platform (Campaign Manager), a single environment that combines Sponsored Ads, Streaming TV, and Programmatic DSP.

One login. One campaign structure. One measurement framework.

“Amazon is becoming a one-stop shop for full-funnel advertising,” said  Annalise C. , Director of Retail Media. “AI will be leveraged to accelerate how quickly advertisers can create, manage, and measure campaigns. It is taking complexity out of the process so teams can focus on strategy instead of setup.”

Lina Muehlenbrink , Retail Media Manager, agreed. “The integration across DSP and Sponsored Search is what brands have been waiting for. We can finally see performance in one place and act on it in real time.”

It is a reminder that efficiency is not the end goal. Clarity is. When your tools talk to each other, your teams can too.

Creative Agent: Production Without the Bottlenecks

The standout moment of unBoxed was Creative Agent, Amazon’s new AI creative platform that can turn simple product photos into finished ads across formats in under an hour.

Here is what it can already do:

• Research your brand and competitors
• Generate campaign concepts and storyboards
• Produce video, display, and audio assets
• Adapt creative for Sponsored and Streaming formats
• Create seasonal or product-specific variants instantly

“The Creative Agent demo was a big lightbulb moment for me,” said Sr. Director of Retail Media, Chase Arnold “Seeing it generate creative across formats showed what is possible when brands remove the bottleneck of production.”

Annalise added, “The Creativity Keynote inspired me to rethink how we use AI to accelerate activation. Creative Agent will lower the barrier to testing new formats and shorten the time between idea and launch.”

Technology has always promised speed. What matters now is how brands use that speed to tell better stories.

AI Tools That Do the Heavy Lifting

Amazon also unveiled three tools that will redefine campaign management:

Ads Agent Automatically builds and optimizes campaigns, handling audience creation, keyword generation, and bid adjustments across Sponsored, Display, and DSP.

Full-Funnel Campaigns Uses one setup that automatically distributes budget across ad types based on real-time performance. No more manual reallocation of spend as results change.

Natural Language AMC Turns Amazon Marketing Cloud into a conversational insight tool. Anyone can ask a plain-language question like “Which audiences drove the most new-to-brand customers last quarter?” and get SQL-level answers in seconds.

“AI. Amazon is going all in,” said Chase Arnold. “UnBoxed showed that the company is shifting from AI-powered to AI-integrated. These are not side tools anymore. They are part of how every campaign will be managed.”

Sam Griffin  pointed out that the improvements reach beyond the new releases. “Amazon is also refining existing products like Performance+. They are adding transparency into how it overlaps with audience segments, which helps us find new growth opportunities.”

As Chase put it later, the difference is no longer in what Amazon can do, but in what advertisers must adapt to.

Measurement Gets Real: The Authenticated Graph

Amazon’s Authenticated Graph now connects 90 percent of U.S. households across its ecosystem. Every impression—from Streaming TV to Sponsored Products—can now be deterministically tied to a purchase.

“Amazon’s development of an AI agent is another step toward streamlining how we analyze and manage campaigns at scale,” said one team member. “Combined with full-funnel campaigns and consolidated accounts, launching and managing campaigns is getting more efficient and more impactful.”

This update moves the industry closer to true accountability. It connects exposure to conversion in a way that has rarely been possible in digital advertising.

The Shopper Journey Is Messy. The Funnel Should Be Too.

If there was one clear theme this year, it was that the path to purchase no longer follows a straight line.

“Consumers rarely go through a clean process from the top of the funnel straight down to conversion,” said one teammate. “Amazon is challenging advertisers to reach customers at every level of the funnel, at scale.”

Lina added, “Be more confident in the full-funnel approach even when attribution is not perfect. The data will never be completely clean, but the intent signals are there. Keep testing.”

At Bluebird, we believe full-funnel planning is not a campaign type. It is a mindset. AI is helping us execute that mindset faster and more precisely than ever.

The Product Highlights That Matter

To recap the key releases:

• Netflix joins DSP inventory, expanding reach into premium streaming environments.This move signals Amazon’s ambition to compete at the highest level of connected TV.
• Single advertiser account access reduces logins and operational friction.Less clicking, more optimizing, and a big win for efficiency.
• Complete TV unifies Streaming TV buying across publishers with guaranteed delivery and AI-driven optimization.A single place to plan, buy, and measure cross-publisher campaigns.
• SB Share of Voice (SOV) launches with locked-in pricing for brands focused on category leadership.An important step for advertisers competing in crowded categories.
• Sponsored Product Video gains new placements to increase visibility.Proof that video is becoming a core storytelling format for retail media.

Every update points to a single goal: simplifying the systems that let brands focus on strategy instead of logistics.

What We Recommend for 2026

1. Test Creative Agent early. Try it for seasonal campaigns or format extensions to see how AI can expand your creative pipeline.

2. Consolidate campaign management. Teams already using the unified platform are launching campaigns faster and reporting cleaner results.

3. Lean into full-funnel campaigns. Let AI handle allocation while you focus on learning from the data.

4. Use Natural Language AMC for everyday insights. Turn complex reporting into daily conversations across your team.

“Do not chase every new feature,” said Chase. “Pick the tools that actually solve your bottlenecks. Test with purpose and double down where you see impact.”

The Bluebird Perspective

At unBoxed, Amazon did not just add new features. It removed friction points that have slowed advertisers for years.

“Leverage Amazon as a one-stop shop to reach your audience effectively at scale,” said Annalise. “But always lead with strategy. Technology only amplifies what is already there.”

For us, this is what progress looks like. Human insight meeting smarter systems. Creative Agent democratizes production. Campaign Manager simplifies execution. Authenticated Graph connects performance to the shopper journey.

Our role at Bluebird is to help brands turn these advancements into action. Technology alone does not create growth. People do.

The tools are ready. The opportunity now belongs to the brands who use them with clarity, speed, and purpose.

Our Promise to You

We will continue helping brands turn insight into action and complexity into clarity. Retail media will keep evolving, but our commitment stays the same: to guide your brand toward the strategies, tools, and teams that create real growth.