Your Vision — Our Strategy

Managing deals in Amazon DSP has always required manual work, browsing available inventory, evaluating individual deals, adding them one by one, and monitoring performance throughout the flight. For Streaming TV campaigns, where available private auction deals across Amazon O&O, APD, and third-party exchanges can number in the hundreds, that process consumed real setup time and created the risk of missing relevant inventory. Amazon has now automated that process for a specific campaign type. What It Does Automatic deal selection is a machine-learning feature that curates, activates, and continuously updates a group of programmatic deals for your ad group, without requiring manual browsing or selection. It launched in April 2026 for Streaming TV awareness campaigns in the US, expanded in July to include Online Video and four additional markets, and the August 21 documentation update extends the beta to the UK, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain. Current availability: Streaming TV and Online Video campaigns with the Awareness goal type and Reach KPI only. Programmatic Guaranteed deals are not eligible. When enabled, Amazon DSP evaluates your available private auction deals and recommends compatible options based on media type, flight dates, targeting dimensions, and deal availability. It then manages those deals throughout the campaign, adding high-performing deals, removing underperforming ones, and updating recommendations dynamically if you change CPM, targeting, or eligibility controls. What Controls You Keep You are not handing over full control. Two eligibility settings let you restrict which supply sources the system uses: you can limit to Amazon O&O only, open internet only, or specific sources. You can also restrict to your pre-negotiated deal library, public marketplace deals, or both. Automatic and manual deal selection can run together in the same campaign. If you have specific placements you want guaranteed, a negotiated deal, or a priority publisher, add those manually and let the system discover additional inventory around them. If no deals appear after enabling the feature, the most common causes are targeting that is too restrictive, a CPM floor that is too high, or eligibility controls that are too narrow. Why It Matters For brands running Streaming TV awareness campaigns, this removes the most operationally demanding part of DSP deal management. The system handles discovery and ongoing optimization, which reduces setup time and eliminates the static deal mix problem, where a manually selected group of deals degrades in performance as inventory dynamics change but nobody updates it. For teams running Brand+ STV campaigns: automatic deal selection is already enabled by default on new Brand+ STV Prospecting lines since July 2026. If you have existing campaigns set up before that, it is worth checking whether the feature is active and how it is configured in Campaign Manager. The limitation to Awareness and Reach campaigns is clear. Lower-funnel Streaming TV objectives, retargeting, consideration, and conversion still require manual deal management. The automation is scoped to top-of-funnel, where deal variety and reach optimization matter most. If you want to stay updated on Amazon changes, subscribe to our blog. If you need support with PPC, DSP, AMC, analytics, or a long-term growth strategy, contact the ANavigator team at info@anavigator.co  Book a call to get a FREE AUDIT using the link below:     Book a call – FREE AUDIT   Follow my Weekly Newsletter on LinkedIn:  / amazon-digest-for-brands-7232361008185372672   Follow me on LinkedIn:  / ookovalov  Follow ANavigator on social media:  / anavigator    /@anavigator_official  / anavigator7    / @anavigators     LinkedIn page to contact us:   Author: Oleksandr Kovalov Role: Founder & CEO @ ANavigator — The ANavigator Team

For years, Amazon's creator ecosystem had a clear hierarchy. Associates were link-droppers, affiliates who scattered tracking URLs across blogs, newsletters, and social posts to drive external traffic to Amazon. Influencers were the elevated tier: vetted creators with personalized Storefronts, shoppable collections, and the ability to earn from content that lived on Amazon itself. That division officially ended on April 14, 2026. Amazon's updated Associates Program Operating Agreement rewrote the rules: completing standard Associates registration now grants every creator access to a public Amazon Storefront and a unique creator link, features that were previously locked behind the Influencer application process. This is not a minor feature update. It changes how many creators exist in Amazon's ecosystem with real shoppable infrastructure, and that has direct implications for brands managing creator relationships. What Changed on April 14 Three things changed simultaneously, and they compound each other. First, Storefront access. Any Associate who completes standard registration now gets a public Storefront by default, a dedicated page at amazon.com/shop/username where they can curate product collections, upload photos and videos, and organize recommendations by theme or occasion. Previously, this required a separate Influencer Program application that Amazon evaluated based on social presence, engagement quality, and content fit. Second, creator tools. Idea Lists, photo uploads, video uploads, and Onsite Store IDs, the tracking links that let creators earn commissions directly from on-site content, were all Influencer-only before April 14. All of that is now standard for every Associate. Third, AI support inside the dashboard. Associates now have access to an "Ask Creator Assistant" option inside their dashboard. This AI layer answers questions about policies, reporting, Storefronts, and program tools directly, rather than sending creators to search through help documentation. None of these three elements is new. Storefronts existed. Idea Lists existed. Help content existed. What changed is who can access them, and that changes the scale of the creator ecosystem significantly. Why Amazon Made This Move The rollout followed a period in which many experienced creators stepped away from the Influencer Program after commission rate changes and shifting program terms. Opening Storefront access to all Associates was partly a strategic reset, rebuilding creator supply after losing a portion of established influencers. The broader logic is also straightforward. Amazon built its creator infrastructure- Storefronts, Idea Lists, onsite video - to turn product recommendations into a commerce channel that lives on Amazon rather than just pointing to it. The more creators have access to that infrastructure, the more content gets produced, the more product discovery happens on-platform, and the more Amazon captures the value of creator-driven commerce rather than just referral traffic. The August 10, 2026 Sponsored Products expansion, where Amazon ads started running inside creator review content, is a separate program, but it runs in the same direction: Amazon is systematically turning creator content into a shoppable advertising surface. The April 14 update creates the foundation. The advertising integration monetizes it. What This Means for Brands on Amazon The practical implication for brands is straightforward but easy to underestimate. The pool of creators with real shoppable infrastructure on Amazon just expanded significantly. A blogger with a niche audience, a newsletter writer with a dedicated readership, a micro-creator with 3,000 engaged followers in a specific category, any of them who registered as an Associate after April 14 now has a Storefront, an Idea List, and the ability to create on-site content that generates commissions directly from Amazon product pages. For brands, this means more potential creator partners with a real page to point people to, not just a link in a caption. A creator Storefront is a persistent, curated brand presence that shoppers can return to. It converts differently than a one-off affiliate link because it provides context, editorial curation, and social proof around the products featured. Creator Connections, Amazon's brand-deal platform where brands can offer creators fixed fees or bonus commissions for featuring specific products, is the practical tool for reaching this expanded creator pool. It is accessible to brands through Amazon's advertising console and allows brands to set specific product targets, commission structures, and campaign parameters for creator partnerships. For brands that have been treating influencer partnerships as separate from their Amazon strategy, the April 14 change narrows that gap considerably. Creator content that lives on Amazon, produced by creators who now have Storefronts and Idea Lists by default, is both a discovery channel and an advertising surface, one that Amazon is actively building out and that operates outside the traditional sponsored placement auction. What to Check Right Now Two practical actions stand out. First, check whether the creators your brand already works with- affiliates, brand ambassadors, review partners - have built Storefronts since April 14. Many Associates who had access to the update have not yet acted on it. A conversation pointing them toward their new Storefront capability costs nothing and can result in a more effective partnership than a scattered link arrangement. Second, review your Creator Connections setup if you have not looked at it recently. The expanded creator pool means more potential partners are discoverable through the platform than were available before April. Setting a campaign with clear product targets and competitive commission terms now reaches a broader range of creators with real shoppable infrastructure than it would have six months ago. The gate between "affiliate" and "creator" inside Amazon's ecosystem is gone. The brands that adjust their creator strategy to reflect the new reality will access a wider partner pool and more durable product discovery than the ones still treating these as two separate channels. If you want to stay updated on Amazon changes, subscribe to our blog. If you need support with PPC, DSP, AMC, analytics, or a long-term growth strategy, contact the ANavigator team at info@anavigator.co  Book a call to get a FREE AUDIT using the link below:     Book a call – FREE AUDIT   Follow my Weekly Newsletter on LinkedIn:  / amazon-digest-for-brands-7232361008185372672   Follow me on LinkedIn:  / ookovalov  Follow ANavigator on social media:  / anavigator    /@anavigator_official  / anavigator7    / @anavigators     LinkedIn page to contact us:   Author: Oleksandr Kovalov Role: Founder & CEO @ ANavigator — The ANavigator Team