Amazon Tests Agentic Ads That Complete Purchases Inside Alexa
The retail giant's new conversational ad format lets customers buy without leaving the assistant, as brands grapple with measuring success beyond clicks.
Amazon unveiled a conversational advertising format at this year's Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity that allows customers to complete transactions entirely within Alexa interactions. The company calls the approach Alexa+ Agentic Ads, positioning it as a framework where users can order food delivery or purchase concert tickets without clicking through to external pages or traditional search results.
The format relies on large language models to conduct what Amazon describes as natural conversations with customers, answering questions without predetermined advertiser scripts. Charlotte Maines, vice president of devices, content and advertising at Amazon, explained that the agentic element distinguishes these ads from conventional prompted interactions.
Papa Johns and The Orchard, a Sony subsidiary handling ticket sales, have signed on as beta partners. Amazon timed the announcement to coincide with Prime Day but declined to share pricing details. The company and its partners are currently working through fundamental questions around success metrics and transaction completion rates.
Why it matters
Amazon's move signals a broader industry shift away from click-based advertising toward conversational commerce where recommendations replace traditional search results. As consumers increasingly interact with AI assistants for shopping, brands face pressure to develop strategies that don't rely on landing pages or conventional conversion funnels. The challenge: proving return on investment when familiar metrics disappear.
The measurement challenge
Advertisers are wrestling with what some call the "tax" problem in AI-native advertising. Mike Feldman, senior vice president of commerce at Flywheel, framed it bluntly: paid advertising in these environments represents a tax brands pay for failing at organic optimization. Another agency executive, speaking anonymously, said clients won't commit budgets until platforms establish metrics that replace clicks.
Chance Chapman, executive vice president at VML overseeing retail media, outlined the open questions: How are recommendations generated? What signals influence them? How do brands measure incrementality when agents drive shopping?
Amazon's AI shopping evolution
The agentic ad format builds on Amazon's May decision to sunset Rufus and integrate the AI shopping assistant into Alexa+ to create Alexa for Shopping. This consolidated assistant now operates across Amazon's shopping app, website, and Echo Show devices. Molly Schonthal, managing director of agentic commerce transformation at VML, suggested Amazon spent the past year creating tension between AI and advertising, and now positions them to amplify each other's value.
Industry-wide transformation
Amazon's announcement follows similar moves across the industry. Google revealed conversational ad updates at Google Marketing Live in May. OpenAI began testing ads in ChatGPT in February and has since signed LiveRamp as its first conversion API partner. OpenAI projects $2.5 billion in ad revenue this year, growing to $100 billion by 2030, according to Axios. WPP forecasts AI search ads will become advertising's fastest-growing channel.
Consumer adoption remains uneven. Tinuiti's 2026 AI Trends study found 34% of people use AI platforms daily and 21% weekly, but 20% report never using them. Joe O'Connor, senior director of innovation and growth for Amazon at Tinuiti, characterized Amazon's latest offerings as niche and small-scale, though marketers view them as indicators of coming changes.
Details in this report were first published by Digiday.
This is an original analysis by the Omega editorial team. Source reporting: AI Watch.
Want systems like this working for your business?
Book a Call
