For the second consecutive year, Amazon Ads brought its unBoxed event to Toronto, drawing hundreds of advertisers, agencies, and partners to explore its vision for unified campaign management, AI tools that amplify human expertise, and a simpler approach to full-funnel advertising at scale.
Amazon Ads introduced Creative Agent in Canada, an agentic AI tool that functions as both a creative partner and strategist, helping advertisers produce professional-quality ads with greater speed and ease.
Prime Video is bringing the NBA to Canadian viewers, giving advertisers a new way to reach passionate fans. Ad packages will be available starting May 2026.
On February 25, 2026, Amazon Ads hosted its second annual unBoxed event in Toronto, unveiling new AI-powered solutions that enable Canadian advertisers to create, measure, and optimize campaigns with greater speed and efficiency. The event drew hundreds of advertisers, agencies, and partners as Amazon Ads set out its vision for unified campaign management, AI innovations that amplify human expertise, and democratized creativity for Canadian brands, all designed to simplify full-funnel advertising at scale.
"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."
AI innovations that drive efficiencies
During unBoxed Toronto, Amazon Ads announced the launch of Creative Agent in Canada, an agentic AI tool that enables advertisers to easily create professional, quality ads using Amazon's extensive retail insights. Acting like a creative partner and strategist, it helps advertisers of all sizes produce polished ads in just hours—at no additional cost—unlocking the same creative edge once reserved for the biggest brands.
Using natural language prompts, advertisers can conduct product and audience research, brainstorm ideas, develop creative concepts in storyboard format, and produce compelling video and display ads that resonate with customers. Creative Agent has access to over 50 tools, including the recently launched Video Generator, to create ad copy, scripts, voices, music, and video content, with advertisers maintaining full control over the final output.
Amazon Ads also showcased Ads Agent in Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC), an AI assistant that enables advertisers to use plain-English requests to carry out complex advertising tasks; and its recently launched MCP Server, built on the Model Context Protocol, that enables AI agents to connect directly to Amazon Ads, translating natural language prompts into structured advertising actions.
Advertisers can ask straightforward business questions in plain English to build audience segments and receive actionable insights without writing complex SQL queries or navigating technical documentation. The tool recommends audiences for upcoming campaigns and provides guidance on which advertising signals and analysis will deliver more meaningful outcomes. Beta users saw a median 18% reduction in CPM and 16% reduction in CPA.
Simplified campaign management
During the event, Amazon Ads demonstrated the new unified Campaign Manager, a single ad platform that brings together Amazon’s advertising console and the Amazon DSP, eliminating the need for separate accounts and manual metric compilation. Advertisers can now manage campaigns across the entire funnel through one global entry point.
With a centralized reporting hub to view cross-channel insights from multiple campaigns and brands, plus key metrics and AI-powered search capabilities, ad buying and campaign implementation is now simpler. Advertisers and partners can now quickly identify and act on campaign insights in seconds.
Enhanced full-funnel performance with Brand+ and Performance+
Attendees also had the chance to learn more about Brand+ and Performance+, which are available to all Canadian advertisers. These AI-powered advertising solutions leverage Amazon's first-party insights to help brands optimize their campaigns across the entire customer journey. Performance+ focuses on driving immediate conversions through strategies like customer acquisition, remarketing, retention, and consideration, while Brand+ identifies and engages future customers through prospecting tactics. Together, these solutions automate ad group creation and optimization for both brands that sell on Amazon and those that do not, delivering measurable results at every stage of the funnel.
Advertisers using Brand+ saw 71% more product detail page views, 42% increase in brand discovery among new customers, and 64% more purchases. When combined with Performance+, brands selling in the Amazon store achieved a 34% boost in Return on Ad Spend (ROAS), while brands not selling in the store saw a 68% improvement in Cost Per Acquisition (CPA).
Increased brand visibility on the Amazon store
Amazon Ads presented several shopping innovations that offer seamless, branded shopping journeys at key moments in the customer journey. With one in five Amazon searches including a brand name[1], Sponsored Brands Reserve Share of Voice helps brands maintain consistent visibility when shoppers are actively looking for them.
Brands can pre-purchase top-of-search placements for branded keywords at a fixed upfront price, ensuring visibility at crucial shopping moments. Early pilots with advertisers drove +143% click-attributed sales.
Sponsored Brand collections, enable brands to display a range of related products making it easier for customers to engage. Powered by AI, it curates the best product combinations for shoppers who can browse styles, compare colours and features, and make decisions in a single ad experience. Beta tests showed that AI-powered Sponsored Brand collections expanded discovery and drove 2.5x more unique products purchased compared to manually curated collections.[2]
The reimagined homepage hero placement now offers flexible share of voice packages and targeting options year-round, democratizing access to Amazon's most visible advertising real estate for brands of all sizes.
Expanded entertainment reach for Canadian audiences
Amazon Ads showcased a range of its Prime Video's advertising opportunities for Canadian advertisers, highlighting its expanding content portfolio, live sports programming, and premium publisher integrations. This includes expanding its content slate, including Canadian originals, global hits, and upcoming 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 authentic opportunities for brands to connect through ads that resonate with local audiences.
On the sports side, Prime Video delivers premium live programming throughout the year — 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. Starting Fall 2026, Prime Video will bring the NBA's biggest matchups to Canadian viewers, with 67 weekly regular season games, the Emirates NBA Cup mid-season tournament knockout rounds, and extensive playoff coverage. Advertisers can access NBA packages starting May 2026, offering a direct line to engaged, passionate fans.
Rounding out the offering, Amazon Ads provides access to premium publishers, including direct integrations with Netflix and Spotify via Amazon DSP, giving advertisers even greater reach across the content Canadians love most.
[1] Amazon Internal, 2025, WW
[2] Amazon Internal, US, closed Beta test with advertisers, Nov–Dec 2025
