Agentic is the label. Giving up control is the reality

In summary

• Amazon is making automated buying the default: Amazon Ads Agent brings AI-assisted buying into a unified experience, while retaining existing programmatic controls.
• Platforms are taking greater control: Amazon, Google and Meta are increasingly automating decisions about how advertising budgets are spent, raising concerns about transparency, costs and supply paths.
• Independent oversight remains essential: As automation increases, marketers need independent measurement, first-party data and greater visibility and control over their media investments.

Agentic advertising. What’s actually changed?

At its unBoxed conference on 29 September, Amazon introduced Amazon Ads Agent, bringing its demand-side platform (DSP) and sponsored advertising experience under one name, with agentic AI embedded throughout.

Amazon’s announcement attracted plenty of attention, but it’s worth asking how much has actually changed. AI is driving investment and valuations across the technology sector, and advertising platforms are increasingly positioning themselves around it. Beyond the new terminology, much of the underlying programmatic technology remains familiar.

Audience targeting, frequency management, Deal IDs, custom bidding and supply selection are still available. The difference is how marketers access them.

Amazon’s new Display, Video and Audio experience, DVA+, makes automated buying the simpler route. Marketers provide an objective, products, AI creative and budget. Amazon’s technology handles targeting, inventory selection, bidding and optimisation.

Those wanting more direct control can use advanced settings. DVA+ with advanced settings is currently available to limited advertisers in the US, with plans to expand through the end of the year.

It’s a meaningful change, but not because Amazon has invented a new way to buy advertising. Programmatic guaranteed, preferred deals and private marketplaces have existed for years.

What’s changing is the starting point. Rather than marketers choosing how to buy, the platform increasingly offers to make those decisions for them.

Louder is an Amazon Ads Partner, although Amazon hasn’t been a priority buying platform for most of our clients in recent years. We haven’t yet traded on these new formats, and we’ll be testing the capabilities as they become available.

For now, the more interesting question isn’t what Amazon has renamed, it’s what this direction means for marketers’ control.

Three changes worth paying attention to

The default is shifting

Amazon isn’t alone in moving towards AI-led buying.

Google is introducing Gemini-powered assistance into Display & Video 360 (DV360), while Meta’s Advantage+ and Google’s Performance Max have already demonstrated how much of campaign management can be handed over to platform algorithms.

Amazon’s DVA+ follows a similar principle. Marketers can start with a simplified, automated experience and move into advanced settings when they need more control.

Existing experienced Amazon programmatic advertisers retain access to those settings, while certain new advertisers must request them through an account manager.

The controls haven’t disappeared. But when automation becomes the easiest route, marketers need to understand which decisions they’re making and which they’ve delegated.

The commercial model deserves attention

Historically, DSPs have competed on their technology, access to inventory, data and fees.

Now the economics are changing.

Industry reporting has described Amazon DSP fees ranging from around 4% to 8%, with some arrangements reportedly much lower or even zero.

Lower platform fees sound attractive, but marketers should consider how the platform makes money elsewhere.

Amazon operates buying technology, owns valuable advertising inventory across properties including Prime Video and Twitch, provides publisher technology and holds extensive first-party retail data.

There are legitimate advantages to connecting these capabilities. There are also commercial incentives worth understanding.

If a platform reduces the visible cost of buying technology while earning revenue elsewhere in the transaction, marketers need to understand the total economics of their media investment.

A lower technology fee doesn’t automatically mean better value.

There’s also a broader question about where commercial power sits as advertising platforms expand their role across buying, inventory, data and measurement. Amazon’s growing reach across these areas makes that question increasingly relevant. While advertisers pay a DSP fee, additional costs can quickly add up, from CPM charges for accessing Amazon audiences to cross-channel measurement fees calculated as a percentage of media spend. For marketers, the question isn’t simply what the platform charges to buy media, but how much it costs to access the data, audiences and measurement capabilities needed to make that investment work, and who benefits commercially along the way.

The buying process becomes harder to interrogate

Amazon’s Full-Funnel Campaigns takes automation further, allowing marketers to provide a goal and budget while the platform manages elements including channel selection, audiences and optimisation.

It’s part of a broader approach already familiar through Meta’s Advantage+ and Google’s Performance Max.

The marketer defines the outcome. The platform makes many of the decisions about how to achieve it.

That can deliver real benefits, particularly for marketers without the resources to manage complex campaigns manually.

But it also changes the relationship between the marketer and the technology.

When platforms determine where budgets go, optimise the activity and report the results, marketers can become increasingly dependent on those platforms to explain their own performance.

Amazon has retained reporting and control capabilities across its products, including publisher-level visibility within DVA+. The concern isn’t that every automated product operates as a complete black box.

It’s that marketers may become less involved in understanding the decisions behind their results.

And that isn’t a problem unique to Amazon.

The risk isn’t automation. It’s what marketers stop knowing.

Agentic advertising will continue to develop, and there’s every reason to expect these systems to become more capable.

But there is a longer-term risk that deserves attention.

As marketers hand more decisions to platforms, they may gradually lose the knowledge required to challenge those decisions.

Which controls are available? What changes actually improve performance? Which publishers are receiving investment? What supply paths are being used? And how does any of it contribute to business outcomes?

Once that understanding disappears from an organisation, rebuilding it isn’t straightforward.

That’s why we believe independence matters.

Louder doesn’t mark up media, receive vendor commissions or rebates, or operate under holding company alignment. Our role is to help marketers make informed decisions about their technology and media investment, regardless of which platform they’re using.

AI may well improve the results marketers achieve. We simply believe those results should be independently understood and verified.

Before accepting the next automated buying recommendation, there’s one question worth asking your agency or platform representative:

Which settings are we using by default, and who chose them?

Louder recommendations

Just because we can automate more of the media buying process doesn’t mean we should hand over every decision.

As platforms take on greater responsibility for campaign execution and optimisation, marketers need to be clear about which decisions they retain, how performance is measured and who is accountable for the outcomes.

At Louder, we recommend focusing on four areas:

• Buy a unified stack: Centralise ad serving, measurement and frequency management rather than relying on individual platforms. Google Marketing Platform is one example.
• Own the foundations: Build first-party data, measurement and attribution capabilities that allow you to assess performance independently.
• Let agents guide, not act: Use AI to inform decisions, design experiments and identify opportunities, while retaining control over optimisation and validating results.
• Keep control over premium supply: Use programmatic guaranteed and private deals to maintain visibility and control over where your media investment goes.

Get in touch

As advertising platforms take on more of the buying process, understanding your technology setup and maintaining control over your media investment is becoming increasingly important.

Louder helps brands and agencies review their advertising technology, strengthen measurement and make more informed media buying decisions.

Get in touch to discuss your setup, or sign up to our newsletter for the latest industry developments.