For the second consecutive year, Amazon Ads brought its unBoxed event to Toronto, drawing hundreds of advertisers, agencies, and partners to explore its latest innovations. The February 25 gathering positioned Amazon’s advertising business as increasingly focused on unified campaign management, artificial intelligence tools that amplify human expertise, and a streamlined approach to full-funnel advertising at scale.
At Amazon Ads unBoxed Toronto, the company unveiled a series of AI-powered solutions aimed at enabling Canadian advertisers to create, measure, and optimize campaigns with greater speed and efficiency. The overarching message was clear: simplify advertising complexity while improving performance outcomes across channels.
“As advertising grows more complex, we’re focused on making it simpler for Canadian brands,” said Uri Gorodzinsky, Managing Director, Amazon Ads Canada and Mexico. “At unBoxed Toronto, we showcased our new Unified Campaign Manager, and introduced Creative Agent, an AI-powered tool that helps advertisers of all sizes produce professional-quality ads with greater speed and ease. Combined with Amazon’s first-party signals and an expanding Prime Video content slate, these innovations give Canadian advertisers everything they need to drive stronger performance across the full funnel.”
Creative Agent Launches in Canada
A key announcement at Amazon Ads unBoxed Toronto was the Canadian launch of Creative Agent, an agentic AI tool designed to function as both creative partner and strategist. The solution enables advertisers to produce professional-quality ads more quickly, leveraging Amazon’s extensive retail insights.
Creative Agent allows advertisers to use natural language prompts to conduct product and audience research, brainstorm ideas, and develop creative concepts in storyboard format. From there, users can produce video and display ads that resonate with customers. The tool has access to more than 50 capabilities, including the recently launched Video Generator, enabling the creation of ad copy, scripts, voices, music, and video content. Advertisers maintain full control over the final output.
According to Amazon Ads, the goal is to democratize creative capabilities that were once accessible primarily to large brands with significant budgets. By reducing production timelines to hours rather than weeks, Creative Agent aims to increase efficiency without sacrificing quality.
AI Assistants and Data Simplification
In addition to Creative Agent, Amazon Ads showcased Ads Agent within Amazon Marketing Cloud. This AI assistant enables advertisers to use plain-English requests to perform complex advertising tasks. Instead of writing SQL queries or navigating technical documentation, advertisers can ask business questions and build audience segments using conversational prompts.
The tool recommends audiences for upcoming campaigns and provides guidance on which signals and analyses may drive more meaningful outcomes. Beta users saw a median 18 percent reduction in CPM and a 16 percent reduction in CPA, according to the company.
Amazon Ads also highlighted its recently launched MCP Server, built on the Model Context Protocol. The server enables AI agents to connect directly to Amazon Ads systems, translating natural language prompts into structured advertising actions. Together, these developments reflect Amazon’s broader push toward operational simplicity powered by AI.
Unified Campaign Manager Streamlines Execution
A central theme at Amazon Ads unBoxed Toronto was the introduction of the new unified Campaign Manager. The platform brings together Amazon’s advertising console and Amazon DSP into a single ad environment, removing the need for separate accounts and manual metric consolidation.
Advertisers can now manage campaigns across the entire funnel through one global entry point. A centralized reporting hub provides cross-channel insights across multiple campaigns and brands. The addition of AI-powered search capabilities is designed to help advertisers identify and act on campaign insights in seconds.
For agencies and in-house teams alike, this structural integration addresses longstanding workflow inefficiencies. By consolidating buying and reporting into one system, Amazon Ads is positioning itself as a more cohesive full-funnel partner for Canadian marketers.
Brand+ and Performance+ Drive Full-Funnel Results
Attendees also learned more about Brand+ and Performance+, two AI-powered advertising solutions now available to all Canadian advertisers. These tools leverage Amazon’s first-party insights to optimize campaigns throughout the customer journey.
Performance+ focuses on driving immediate conversions through customer acquisition, remarketing, retention, and consideration strategies. Brand+, meanwhile, is designed to identify and engage future customers through prospecting tactics.
Advertisers using Brand+ saw 71 percent more product detail page views, a 42 percent increase in brand discovery among new customers, and 64 percent more purchases. When combined with Performance+, brands selling in the Amazon store achieved a 34 percent boost in Return on Ad Spend, while brands not selling in the store saw a 68 percent improvement in Cost Per Acquisition.
Together, these tools automate ad group creation and optimization for brands that sell on Amazon and those that do not, reinforcing Amazon’s emphasis on measurable performance at every stage of the funnel.
New Shopping Innovations on the Amazon Store
Amazon Ads also presented shopping innovations aimed at increasing brand visibility at key moments in the customer journey. With one in five Amazon searches including a brand name, Sponsored Brands Reserve Share of Voice allows advertisers to pre-purchase top-of-search placements for branded keywords at a fixed upfront price.
Early pilots drove a 143 percent increase in click-attributed sales, according to the company. Sponsored Brand collections, powered by AI, curate related product combinations to make it easier for customers to browse styles, compare features, and make decisions within a single ad experience. Beta tests showed that AI-powered Sponsored Brand collections drove 2.5 times more unique products purchased compared to manually curated collections.
The reimagined homepage hero placement now offers flexible share-of-voice packages and year-round targeting options. Amazon Ads framed this move as democratizing access to its most visible advertising real estate for brands of varying sizes.
Prime Video Expands Entertainment and Sports Reach
Entertainment inventory formed another major pillar of the event. Amazon Ads showcased Prime Video’s expanding content portfolio, including Canadian originals and global titles such as Elle, The Boys, Carrie, Off Campus, Jack Ryan, Spider Noir, and Cross. Since 2015, Amazon has produced more than 50 titles in Canada, creating localized advertising opportunities.
Live sports programming continues to expand as well. Prime Video currently delivers Prime Monday Night Hockey, NHL Coast to Coast, 19 exclusive PWHL regular season games plus a semi-final playoff series, and 30 WNBA regular season games including the Commissioners Cup and a third of all playoff games annually.
Looking ahead, Prime Video will bring NBA matchups to Canadian viewers beginning in Fall 2026. The offering will include 67 weekly regular season games, the Emirates NBA Cup mid-season tournament knockout rounds, and extensive playoff coverage.
Advertisers will be able to access NBA packages starting May 2026, providing a new channel to reach engaged sports audiences.
Amazon Ads also emphasized access to premium publishers through direct integrations with Netflix and Spotify via Amazon DSP. This extended inventory gives advertisers broader reach across streaming environments popular with Canadian audiences.
The second annual Amazon Ads unBoxed Toronto event showcased the company’s strategic direction in Canada. Across AI tools, campaign unification, shopping innovation, and expanded entertainment inventory, the emphasis was on simplification without sacrificing performance.
