The announcements coming out of Amazon's unBoxed 2025 conference yesterday are nothing short of transformative. At Croud, and specifically within our Retail Media team, we view this as a monumental and incredibly positive step forward. While some agencies might see these moves- which somewhat mirror those of Google and Meta in recent years- as a challenge to their old ways of working, we see them as a powerful amplification of our core value proposition.
Amazon is finally shedding its skin as a collection of siloed advertising tools, bitty UIs, and manual functions. Instead, it is emerging as a truly unified, AI-powered, full-funnel media platform. This evolution fundamentally changes the game, and for the better.
Amazon's big changes
The single most critical operational change is the introduction of Campaign Manager, which seamlessly merges Sponsored Ads and DSP into one console. This is the operational game-changer we've been waiting for.
For our clients, this unified platform instantly breaks down the internal friction that has long plagued cross-channel retail media strategies. Full-funnel visibility is no longer a pipe dream, but rather the new operational standard. Whilst at Croud we have always spanned the two platforms, this streamlining allows us to dedicate less time to manual execution and far more time to high-value strategy. We'll be leveraging this new-found efficiency to focus on advanced media mix modelling, allocation across new ad formats, and complex cross-channel attribution both with our clients’ on- and off-Amazon efforts.. This is the type of sophisticated work that truly drives brand growth for our clients.
The rollout of Ads Agent (for planning/optimisation) and Creative Agent (for asset generation) is where the conversation gets exciting. Yes, this lowers the barrier to entry for many brands, enabling them to achieve a higher baseline of sophistication without deep in-house resources.
But this is not a straight up takeover of human strategy. AI tools like Ads Agent are superb at execution, but they still require bespoke strategic guidance and human oversight to ensure alignment with overarching business objectives (e.g., LTV, brand health, market share gain, not just simple ROAS). Most AIs endeavor to tell you what you want to hear, not what is necessarily true - my favourite analogy of this is one AI describing at length how to get to Disneyland London when prompted for directions... Our teams are the custodians of the brand's true strategy, and we will always use our intellect, our close relationships with our brands, and our deep experience to validate and expand upon prompts and results from any AI agent.
Client Challenges
One of the most common challenges our clients face is keeping up with creative fatigue, new formats, and churning out new and exciting creative assets from one month to the next. The Creative Agent accelerates asset creation ten-fold, making creative testing and velocity the next big battleground. Agencies must become the creative strategy directors of the ecosystem; guiding the AI on which creative concepts to generate, which segments to test them against, and how to interpret the results to feed back into the overall brand narrative. Similarly, new formats like Sponsored Products/Brands prompts create an opportunity for conversational, interactive commerce that requires a fresh approach to ad copy and seamless integration, challenging us on our campaign strategy and allowing even more space for creative thinking when it comes to activation.
Perhaps the most valuable strategic opportunity lies in data and measurement. With the integration of powerful new signals, such as Prime Video viewership data into Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC), the measurement landscape has become exponentially more complex and valuable. Our expertise in data stitching and advanced analytics interpretation will be non-negotiable for brands seeking true competitive advantage. Anyone can pull a number; we provide the sophisticated insights that unlock the “why” and drive the “what's next.”
We need to immediately shift the conversation with our clients away from purely bottom-of-funnel metrics, and into holistic, funnel-based KPIs, tying awareness-driving activity on Prime Video or Display directly back to conversion and loyalty- something Croud have already been actively doing, but will now be more seamless and complete than ever.
The automation this brings liberates us from the manual, laborious work, allowing us to rise to a far more strategic, sophisticated, and insightful level of partnership. As these features roll out, Croud will be among the first to pilot, test, and build institutional knowledge on Ads Agent and Creative Agent. Speed-to-knowledge is the ultimate agency differentiator in this new era.
We love these developments from Amazon and are excited to lead our clients into the future of retail media.
