Amazon’s REC Update Turns Display Ads Into Conversations. Here Is What Changed on June 22.

Amazon Ads published a significant update to Responsive eCommerce Creative on June 22, 2026. Most brands running DSP will skim the announcement. The ones paying close attention will recognize that one piece of it changes what a display ad fundamentally does. What REC Is — and Why It Matters Responsive eCommerce Creative is Amazon's automated display advertising solution for brands selling on Amazon. The premise is simple: provide the products you want to advertise, and Amazon handles everything else. The system automatically creates, resizes, and delivers display ads across Amazon-owned properties — including the Amazon shopping app, Fire TV, and Alexa devices — as well as thousands of third-party websites and apps. REC adapts dynamically based on placement, shopper intent, and campaign objectives, without manual intervention. The performance numbers are not marginal. Amazon reports that REC delivers up to 37% higher click-through rates and 26% higher conversion rates through real-time optimization across Amazon-owned surfaces and third-party publishers. The June 22 update adds four meaningful capabilities on top of that foundation. What Is New Rich media layouts. REC can now deliver visually compelling ads featuring lifestyle images, video, logos, and dynamic ad copy. On Fire TV, ads appear as full-bleed cinematic visuals. On news websites, they render as editorial-style creatives that feel native to the page. The result is professional design quality that adapts to context rather than a single static template served everywhere. In-banner video. Video is now available within REC ads in the US, enabling advertisers to tell brand stories directly in the banner format. Videos can be uploaded, sourced from existing campaigns, or created with generative AI. With optimization enabled, Amazon can automatically surface top-performing video assets without additional effort from the advertiser. Campaigns combining OLV and Display have shown 210% higher detail page view rates and 145% higher Branded Search Rates.   AI-powered creative optimization. REC can turn static product images into animated visuals — adding effects like steam rising from a coffee cup or textured backgrounds in motion. It can layer in contextual elements such as seasonal decorations for holiday campaigns, and generate new content through generative AI, including product-in-use videos and lifestyle images. Advertisers can also source and enhance existing assets from prior campaigns, Brand Stores, or product detail pages.   Conversational prompts expanding to the open internet. This is the most significant change in the announcement — and the one most brands have not fully registered yet. The Prompts Update: What It Actually Means Amazon has had conversational prompts embedded in ads since 2024, but only on its own properties. Starting in July 2026, those prompts will expand across the open internet through REC display ads — described by Amazon's Director of Creative Experiences as a "big change." With prompts on REC, shoppers on publisher sites can see display ads with clickable, product-specific questions — like "What hair types is this best for?" or "How long does one bottle typically last?" Questions are drawn from product detail pages, Brand Store content, and campaign data. When a shopper taps a prompt, they are taken directly into a conversational experience with Alexa for Shopping, where they can explore the product, ask follow-up questions, or make a purchase. The numbers behind this format on Amazon's own properties are worth understanding before it expands externally. Nearly 20% of shoppers who interact with a prompt continue the conversation with Alexa for Shopping. And 7 in 10 customers who purchase after clicking a Sponsored Brands prompt are new to the brand. That last figure is the one that matters most for growth-focused brands. A format that generates 70% new-to-brand purchases from the shoppers who convert is not a retargeting tool — it is an acquisition channel. Taking it outside Amazon's properties, onto the open internet, expands the addressable audience for that conversion pattern significantly. Amazon will remember the interaction if a shopper who clicks a prompt on a third-party site later returns to Amazon. The prompt is not a one-time click — it is the start of a tracked journey that persists across surfaces. What This Means for Brands Running DSP REC is available to all advertisers in the Amazon DSP. The upgrade is not a separate product to activate — it is a capability layer added to a format you may already be running. The practical implication is straightforward: the quality of your product detail page content now directly affects the quality of your REC ads at scale. REC rewards brands that feed it well. Strong product content, clear creative direction, and proper measurement are what separate brands that get the 37% from brands that get the platform average. The conversational prompts are generated from your product page. If the content is thin, the prompts will be generic. If it is specific and well-structured — real use cases, clear benefit language, accurate attributes — the prompts will be relevant, and the conversations they start will be more likely to convert. The same content quality that determines how Alexa for Shopping represents your product inside Amazon now determines what display ads say about your product across the rest of the internet. That connection between listing quality and paid media performance is becoming tighter with every update. Automated REC — which automatically generates Responsive eCommerce Creatives from order-level ASINs and associates them to live line items — is now available worldwide, significantly reducing creative setup time. For brands currently managing DSP campaigns with manually designed creatives, this removes the production bottleneck that has historically slowed down display expansion. Three Things to Check in Your DSP Account First, if you are running DSP and not currently using REC, the June 22 update is a reason to revisit that decision. The gap between manually designed display creatives and what REC now produces — rich media layouts, video, AI-generated motion, and contextual adaptation — has closed significantly. Second, review your product detail pages and Brand Store content for the ASINs you are advertising through DSP. The prompts that will appear on third-party publisher sites are generated from that content. Weak listing data produces weak prompts. The creative quality of your open internet display ads now starts on your product page. Third, when the conversational prompts format rolls out to third-party publishers in July, test it against your existing REC creative. The new-to-brand purchase rate for prompt-driven conversions is high enough to warrant dedicated measurement — not just folded into your overall DSP performance view. Display advertising on Amazon has been evolving from a traffic-driving tool toward something that can start and sustain a product-discovery conversation. The June 22 update is the clearest signal yet of how far that evolution has progressed. 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

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