Amazon recently announced that the Amazon Ads Agent is replacing their DSP. If it’s not a DSP, what is it?
It’s a Universal Buying Platform, which requires three things: intent and measurement data, access to any surface regardless of transaction mechanism, and the ability to orchestrate advertising workflows from planning all the way through to reconciliation.
In a sentence:
Amazon Ads is a Universal Buying Platform that can help an advertiser (or their agent) put their money to work on any surface, leveraging Amazon’s data to optimize and allocate.
Then you might ask… doesn’t that sound like an agency’s value prop, especially if they’re turning it into a platform?
WPP Open is a Universal Buying Platform that can help an advertiser (or their agent) put their money to work on any surface, leveraging WPP’s data, expertise, and trading relationships to optimize and allocate.
We don’t think it’s a coincidence that Amazon did this a few weeks after announcing that their DSP is integrating with ChatGPT. There's no bidding here. Amazon's first-party data informs the targeting and OpenAI's system decides what runs. Added to their streaming deals with Netflix, Roku, Spotify, SiriusXM, Disney, Hulu, and ESPN, the conclusion is clear: Amazon is acknowledging that a programmatic-only demand-side platform makes little sense outside a web-centric universe.
Much of the world outside the web, like ChatGPT, isn’t, won’t, and can’t be programmatic. Creators. Events. Sponsorships. Linear. Radio. Billboards. Most of social. Print. And on and on. In most of these cases, the intent vector points toward the consumer (or their agent, which seems increasingly likely with Muse and Dots accelerating). The buyer’s data goes to the surface, instead of the surface’s inventory coming to the bidder.
One final point on calling this “Amazon Ads Agent.” This is confusing because agencies and advertisers will presumably build agents that will run on top of (or inside). Perhaps it should have been named “Amazon Ads Agent Platform,” considering it explicitly has an MCP server for this purpose.
So what does this mean for me?
There are three strategic choices:
Become a UBP. To do this credibly you need to provide intent and measurement (CRM or commerce data), to connect all the surfaces with a universal ad gateway like Apostra, and logic to orchestrate the lifecycle including creative, strategy, planning, and data integration. This is firmly agency territory and why agencies are investing massive sums in building AI platforms and acquiring ad tech companies. Salesforce Campaign Agent is going this direction. Meta buying Manus was a different variant here. Presumably Walmart buying Vibe was a play to be the SMB UBP. If you choose this route, you’re playing against the biggest companies in the world for one of the biggest prizes in the world: the $1T of ad spend that influences trillions of consumer spending.
Go vertical. You can be the best activation platform for US pharma or political. You can be the best at performance TV or in-store retail in the Middle East. There’s $100B at play here - and you’ll have more demand than ever before thanks to the UBPs, which won’t be able to specialize in everything. Build an AdCP-compliant sales agent or find a partner who can help you get set up.
Hope we’re wrong. The web isn’t dead. CTV hasn’t completely consolidated. The agencies are holding on. Agentic isn’t fully up and running. Everybody’s making money. We still have cookies on Chrome. This will all blow over, right?
The dawn of the Universal Buying Platform is exciting! This is the vision we’ve all had for 30 years to create technology that would enable all of advertising. This may be the first industry where we see agents making things happen in the real world at scale. This is the seminal moment for agent-to-agent advertising, for the creator economy to finally have a seat at the ad tech table, for publishers to get a fair shot at the walled gardens, for the next wave of innovation and consolidation.
Just remember, the fundamentals aren’t changing: the world needs advertising. It’s the lifeblood of commerce. Ads funded the invention of modern AI at Google, the breakthrough behind every large language model. Ads will enable billions of people to have access to AI without paying $200 a month for the privilege. We’re memetic creatures and, as Anne commented in SF recently, “If all the billboards are about AI companies, how does anybody know what to wear or eat or binge-watch?”
What advertisers want isn’t the best DSP. They don’t care about acronyms or business models. They want to connect to consumers (and their agents) in ways that influence their behavior. Any company - Amazon, Salesforce, Publicis, OpenAI, Shopify, whoever - that can provide a “just works” way to turn advertising investment into sales and loyalty (that is to say, a Universal Buying Platform) will hold the keys to the future of the digital universe.