CES has become the unofficial kickoff for how ad platforms want brands to buy media for the year.
In ADWEEK’s look behind Amazon’s closed-door advertiser meetings, a few themes repeat: authenticated reach, simplified programmatic buying, live sports moments, and more AI-powered creative and “agentic” campaign setup.
If you run a Shopify brand, sell on Amazon, or operate TikTok Shop and Instagram Shopping, the takeaway is not “Amazon has new ad tech.”
The takeaway is operational:
Platforms are building systems that assume you can produce and rotate creative at high velocity.
And most commerce teams still cannot.
This matters right now because the bottleneck is no longer targeting or placements. It is content throughput—especially short-form video that can adapt to different audiences, formats, and moments.
Most relevant for: performance marketers, in-house creative teams, Amazon sellers, and social commerce operators who need to scale product video output without scaling headcount, studios, or influencer spend.
What is Amazon actually signaling to advertisers?
ADWEEK highlights four priorities Amazon is emphasizing in meetings:
- Authenticated Graph reach across the open internet (less probabilistic guesswork, more verified signals)
- Amazon DSP as a simplification layer (one place to access premium inventory and manage reach and frequency)
- More live sports and live-event buying tools (including AI-assisted optimization for moments)
- More AI-powered creative tooling (Creative Agent, automated campaign recommendations, natural language “Ads Agent”)
These are media buying messages.
But for commerce operators, they translate into a creative reality:
- If targeting gets more deterministic, creative becomes the main variable
- If buying gets easier, testing volume becomes the advantage
- If live moments become more accessible, speed-to-creative becomes the moat
- If AI can generate briefs and storyboards, the limiting factor becomes production, not planning
Why does “authenticated reach” increase the value of better creative?
When platforms can identify and reach the right people more reliably, you lose the excuse that “the algorithm didn’t find our customer.”
It probably did.
So what decides performance?
- The first 1-2 seconds of the video
- The clarity of the product promise
- Proof (demo, texture, fit, before-after, unboxing)
- Offer framing (bundle, price anchor, guarantee)
- The number of variations you can test before fatigue hits
Authenticated reach makes your creative wins more repeatable—and your creative losses more expensive.
That is why the teams that win in 2026 will look less like “campaign teams” and more like creative systems teams.
If Amazon DSP is “simplification,” your creative needs to be modular
Amazon is pitching “one tool” access to premium inventory and programmatic flexibility.
That only helps if you can feed the machine.
In practice, that means building video like LEGO:
- Same core hook, 10 different openings
- Same product demo, 6 different captions
- Same benefits, different ordering (comfort-first vs style-first vs durability-first)
- Same asset, different formats (9:16 for TikTok/Reels, 1:1 for feeds, 16:9 for CTV cutdowns)
This is where AI video creation becomes infrastructure, not a novelty.
An AI video generator workflow lets you take a product’s existing assets (images, PDP copy, reviews, spec sheets) and generate a library of variations that are consistent, on-brand, and fast to iterate.
Tellos fits here as the production layer teams use to generate and version product videos at scale—not as “one more tool,” but as a way to remove the ceiling on output.
Live sports and “big moments” are a creative speed problem, not a media problem
Amazon is leaning into live sports and tools like Live Event Optimizer to help advertisers capture spikes in attention.
But attention spikes do not wait for your production schedule.
To actually benefit from live moments (sports, cultural events, seasonal demand, viral trends), you need:
- A ready-to-publish backlog of product videos
- Templates that can be quickly re-skinned (headline, offer, CTA, context)
- A workflow to generate new variations in hours, not weeks
For commerce brands, “live moments” are not just sports. They are:
- TikTok trend cycles
- Creator-style formats that change monthly
- Seasonal micro-peaks (weather shifts, travel weekends, gifting moments)
- Platform pushes (TikTok Shop category boosts, Amazon deal events)
If you cannot ship creative fast, you end up buying media with stale assets.
Amazon’s “Creative Agent” is a clue: your best creative inputs are already on your PDP
One of the most practical parts of the ADWEEK piece is Amazon’s push to demo AI creative capabilities that:
- analyze brand assets
- compare product features
- read customer reviews
- generate creative briefs and storyboards
That is exactly where high-converting commerce video comes from anyway.
Your PDP already contains:
- Objections (in reviews and Q&A)
- Differentiators (feature bullets)
- Use cases (UGC photos, lifestyle images)
- Proof points (ratings, before-after, materials, sizing notes)
The opportunity is to turn those inputs into UGC-style videos without creators and without waiting on a shoot.
This is the “influencer alternative” most teams actually need: not replacing creators culturally, but replacing the operational dependency on them for baseline volume.
What this means by channel: Shopify, Amazon, TikTok Shop, Instagram Shopping
Shopify brands: treat video as your conversion layer, not your awareness layer
On Shopify, video is doing more than top-of-funnel.
It lifts conversion across:
- product pages (PDP video modules)
- landing pages for paid social
- email and SMS click-through (video thumbnails)
- retargeting creatives
What to do next:
- Build a PDP-to-video pipeline: every new product ships with 15-30 short videos
- Create variants for: “problem-solution,” “feature demo,” “social proof,” “offer,” “comparison”
- Refresh your top 5 SKUs weekly with new hooks to fight fatigue
Related Tellos read: Ad buyers are now using AI for video
Amazon sellers: your listing video is now table stakes, but variation is the edge
Amazon is pushing full-funnel and premium inventory, but Amazon shoppers still convert on clarity and proof.
Your video system should cover:
- Main listing video (clean, benefit-led)
- Secondary videos (feature deep dives, sizing/fit, materials, how-to)
- Sponsored Brands video variants (hook-heavy, fast demo)
- Seasonal versions (giftable, travel, back-to-school)
What to do next:
- Turn reviews into scripts: “People asked X, here’s the answer”
- Build 6-12 video variants per hero SKU for Sponsored Brands testing
- Keep a “compliance-safe” template library so you can generate quickly
TikTok Shop sellers: you are competing on creative velocity
TikTok Shop is not forgiving. The product page is content-driven, and the algorithm rewards iteration.
Winning looks like:
- 3-10 new videos per product per week (for active pushes)
- Multiple creator-style angles (even if AI-generated)
- Fast hook testing and re-posting with new intros
What to do next:
- Create a hook bank: 30 hooks per SKU, rotate weekly
- Use AI UGC generator workflows to produce “talking to camera” style narratives without booking creators
- Build “comment reply” videos at scale (even if the comments are common objections)
Related Tellos read: TikTok just reimagined the product page
Instagram and Facebook commerce: Reels are your catalog now
Instagram Shopping is increasingly a Reels-first environment.
Your job is to make product discovery feel native:
- outfit try-on loops (fashion)
- “3 ways to style” (apparel)
- texture and close-up ASMR (beauty, accessories)
- quick demos with captions (home, gadgets)
What to do next:
- Produce Reels in batches: 20-50 at a time, then schedule and test
- Always generate 9:16 first, then cut down for placements
- Use consistent on-screen text systems so your brand is recognizable at scroll speed