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If your team, agency, or software relies on the Amazon Ads API to create Sponsored Brands ads, a deprecation clock has started. The legacy Product Collection ad type is being phased out of the API in two stages, and the second stage removes any safety net. What Is Actually Changing Amazon's Sponsored Brands API has long supported the Product Collection ad format as a core ad type alongside Store Spotlight and Brand Video. That format is now being consolidated into the newer Sponsored Brands Collections structure — primarily Manual Collection ads — across both API and self-service interfaces. This is not happening in isolation. Amazon already replaced Sponsored Brands Product Collections on the UI side with an AI-powered format starting January 28, 2026, requiring a minimum of three ASINs and up to ten per ad, and eliminating custom creative — no custom headlines, no lifestyle images. Amazon's AI now dynamically selects which products to show based on the individual shopper's browsing history, purchase patterns, and search intent, rather than advertisers controlling a fixed creative. The API deprecation is the second half of that same transition — bringing programmatic ad creation in line with what the self-service console already enforces. The Two-Stage Timeline Starting in September 2026, old API requests that create a Product Collection ad will still be processed, but Amazon will automatically convert them into a Manual Collection ad behind the scenes. If your integration submits a custom image with the request, the API will accept it without error, but the image will not display anywhere on the live ad. This is the dangerous middle stage: no error message, but the output silently does not match the request. Starting in January 2027, the legacy endpoints will shut down entirely. Any tool, script, or automation that still attempts to create the old Product Collection format will receive an outright error, with no automatic fallback to the new structure. For teams running automated campaign creation at scale, the September-to-January window is when integrations appear to be working while quietly producing ads that do not look as configured. That gap is the real operational risk — not the eventual shutoff. Two Technical Details That Trip Up Migrations Manual Collection ads require at least 3 ASINs. This mirrors the three-ASIN minimum already enforced on the self-service side since January 2026. Any API request with fewer than three products will fail outright once it routes through the new structure — there is no fallback to a single-product format. This applies across both API versions. If your integration is built on V1 and uses the productCollectionSettings field, that field maps automatically to manualCollectionSettings under the new structure. Functionally, the mapping happens transparently — but it means the underlying ad behavior, including the loss of custom creative support, applies even to V1 integrations that were not explicitly updated for the new format. Why This Matters Beyond a Technical Footnote Brands with fewer than three ASINs lose access to product collections entirely under the new structure. If your campaign architecture relies on single-product or two-product Sponsored Brands collections — a common setup for brands with limited catalog depth or for highlighting a hero product — those campaigns cannot be recreated under the new API structure once the legacy endpoints shut down in January 2027. Existing campaigns with fewer than three ASINs can continue running, but no new ad groups can be created with fewer than three products, and Amazon is expected to retire legacy campaigns entirely over time. That is a structural constraint, not a temporary inconvenience — brands need to plan their collection campaigns around the 3-to-10 ASIN range as a permanent requirement. The removal of custom creative is the other change worth internalizing. Custom headlines, lifestyle images, and branded creatives are eliminated entirely under the new format, replaced by Amazon's standardized, AI-driven presentation. Any agency or team that built differentiation into Sponsored Brands through custom imagery will need to shift that creative investment elsewhere — A+ Content, Brand Store design, or DSP creative — since Sponsored Brands Collections no longer supports it. What PPC Teams and Software Providers Should Do Before September The action items here are specific and time-sensitive. Audit every integration, script, or third-party tool that creates Sponsored Brands ads through the API. Identify which ones are still building requests against the legacy Product Collection format. This includes internal automation, agency tooling, and any third-party software your team relies on for bulk campaign management. Test the new Manual Collection structure now, while both formats are still live and before the September silent-conversion period begins. Confirm your integration correctly builds requests with a minimum of three ASINs, and verify that any creative assets you are submitting are either compatible with the new format or being phased out of your workflow. Review every existing Sponsored Brands collections campaign with fewer than three ASINs. These campaigns can continue running for now, but cannot be expanded or recreated under the new structure. If a single-product Sponsored Brands placement is core to your strategy, plan an alternative — restructuring to a qualifying multi-ASIN collection, or shifting that budget to a different ad type — before the legacy infrastructure disappears. If you manage Sponsored Brands programmatically through V1 and rely on productCollectionSettings, confirm with your engineering team or software provider that the automatic mapping to manualCollectionSettings has been tested and produces the ad behavior you expect — not just that the API call succeeds without error. The Bigger Pattern This deprecation is consistent with the direction Amazon has been moving across its advertising stack throughout 2026: standardized, AI-driven ad formats replacing manual creative control, and infrastructure consolidation that reduces the number of legacy formats advertisers and developers need to support. For PPC teams, agencies, and software providers, the practical takeaway is straightforward: September 2026 is when the risk becomes invisible — requests succeed, but the creative silently fails to display. January 2027 is when the risk becomes loud — requests fail outright with no fallback. The right time to migrate is before either date, so testing and validation can proceed without disrupting the live campaign. 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 by 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

Week 26 brought nine updates across ads, vendor analytics, promotions, marketplace regulation, and catalog management. Here is everything that moved this week. 📌 Contents: Amazon May Be Testing a New Points-Based Promotion in the U.S. Amazon Adds Multi-Touch Attribution to Sponsored Products Amazon Buying Ads on ChatGPT Amazon Under UK Regulatory Spotlight for UI Self-Preferencing Amazon AVS Insights Hub Launches for 1P Vendors New Seller Incentives Expanding July 30 Variation Wizard Being Replaced in Seller Central FBM Return Protection Now Live Across European Marketplaces Amazon Tests Mobile Product Comparison Feature     1. Amazon May Be Testing a New Points-Based Promotion in the U.S. Amazon appears to be testing a new promotion type called a Points Deal, with a "Create Points Deal" interface now visible inside promotional tools. The feature includes budget controls, scheduling options, and a product-level badge — structured similarly to existing Coupons and Deals. Nothing has been officially confirmed, but the interface detail suggests this is closer to a real rollout than a rough internal test. If launched widely, brands would have another lever to drive conversion and visibility without relying entirely on price reductions. Monitoring this over the next few weeks is worth doing, particularly for brands that have found Coupons and Deals expensive relative to their margins. Read more here by Juan Talavera   2. Amazon Adds Multi-Touch Attribution to Sponsored Products Amazon has introduced an Attribution toggle in the Sponsored Products reporting console. Switching it on unlocks multi-touch attribution columns alongside the traditional last-click view. Sales credit can now be distributed across every ad that contributed to a purchase — not just the one that captured the final click. This matters most for broad match keywords and upper-funnel campaigns that typically look underperforming in last-click reports. Path-to-conversion analysis becomes possible for the first time inside native Sponsored Products data. Pull a 30-day report, compare the two attribution models, and look at the gap — that is where most accounts are making cut decisions they should not be making. Read more here by Hitesh Aswani   3. Amazon Buying Ads on ChatGPT Amazon has started running ads on ChatGPT. The context matters here: Amazon actively blocks AI scrapers from accessing its catalog and turned off Google Shopping ads last year — including pulling the product feed that powers organic Google Shopping results. Buying ad placements on ChatGPT fits the same logic. Amazon does not want to be aggregated or surfaced through third-party AI tools. It will, however, pay to drive traffic directly from those platforms back to Amazon.com. OpenAI's Instant Checkout experiment failed to gain traction, and the company has since shifted toward building an ad business. Amazon's position is consistent: own the destination, buy reach elsewhere. Read more here by Juozas Kaziukėnas   4. Amazon Under UK Regulatory Spotlight for UI Self-Preferencing Amazon's own-brand product pages — such as Blink Outdoor 4 — include UI elements and merchandising real estate that third-party sellers do not have access to. The UK Competition and Markets Authority secured binding commitments from Amazon in 2023 over Buy Box manipulation. The new Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act now gives regulators significantly broader authority to act on UI-level self-preferencing. A £2.7 billion class-action lawsuit approved last year, representing 200,000 third-party sellers, specifically targets Amazon's anti-competitive platform practices. For 3P sellers operating in categories where Amazon competes with its own hardware, margin competition is structurally unfavorable. Use AMC to map conversion paths not visible through standard PPC reporting, and build off-platform traffic sources to reduce dependence on Amazon-controlled discovery surfaces. Read more here by Sebastian Joseph   5. Amazon AVS Insights Hub Launches for 1P Vendors Amazon has begun inviting AVS-enrolled vendors to its new Insights Hub — a six-dashboard analytics platform built on Amazon Quick. The dashboards cover business performance, deal performance, operational performance, weeks of cover, category benchmarking, and peer performance comparison. The peer comparison dashboard is the most notable addition: it allows vendors to benchmark their revenue, ad spend, glance views, and conversion rate against other AVS vendors — data that was previously only accessible through direct communication with internal Amazon contacts. The platform is currently US-only, with international rollout expected in the coming months. With Prime Day approaching, AVS vendors should check for invitations now. Read more here by Martin Heubel   6. New Seller Incentives Expanding July 30 Amazon is updating its New Seller Incentives Program starting July 30, adding fee credits, free storage, free returns, and Vine support for eligible new FBA products. The existing program already offers more than $50,000 in potential benefits: 10% back on the first $50,000 in branded sales, 5% back on the next $950,000, and credits for Vine, Sponsored Ads, coupons, and FBA shipping. The practical issue is that most sellers either overlook these benefits entirely or do not structure their launch to capture them. If a new brand launch is planned for the second half of this year, build the launch plan around these incentives explicitly before spending begins. Read more here by Tanveer Ahmed   7. Variation Wizard Being Replaced in Seller Central Amazon is gradually phasing out the Variation Wizard and integrating variation management into the "List Your Products" dashboard. The updated workflow allows sellers to search products, view variation families, access existing variants, add offers to child ASINs, and download pre-filled variation templates — all without leaving the listing workspace. Bulk uploads and flat files remain functional for complex or large-scale catalog operations. For day-to-day variation management, the new flow removes several steps that previously required navigating between tools. Sellers managing large variation catalogs should test the new interface now rather than waiting for the legacy tool to be removed. Read more here by Khadija Mir   8. FBM Return Protection Now Live Across European Marketplaces Amazon has introduced a product condition questionnaire for FBM orders in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, and Sweden. Buyers must now complete it before initiating a return. If a shopper opens a sealed product and wants to return it due to buyer's remorse, the return can no longer be processed through Amazon's self-service flow. Sellers have always had the legal right under EU consumer protection law to decline such returns — Amazon has now built the process to enforce it. Sellers must still accept returns for sealed products returned for any reason other than buyer's remorse, and for any defective or damaged item. Expect an increase in direct Buyer-Seller Messaging in the near term as buyers adjust. Update return handling procedures now if you operate FBM across any of these markets. Read more here by Donald Murray   9. Amazon Tests Mobile Product Comparison Feature A product comparison feature briefly appeared in Amazon's mobile app, allowing shoppers to browse, select, and compare products side by side. It disappeared within a day of being spotted. Whether it returns in the same form is unclear. The direction, however, is consistent with how Amazon has been building out its shopping experience — making it easier for shoppers to quickly evaluate differences between competing products. Listings that do not clearly address common purchase questions are structurally disadvantaged on any comparison surface. Review listing content against the questions your category's shoppers ask most frequently. Read more here by Charlie Banks   Week 26 covered a wide range — from new attribution data that changes how campaigns should be evaluated, to a potential new promotion type, to regulatory pressure building around Amazon's own-brand practices. Subscribe to the ANavigator Weekly Amazon Digest to get this every week, and visit anavigator.co/blog for deeper analysis on the updates that 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 by 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