ANavigator Weekly Amazon Digest — Week 36

This week brought nine updates worth tracking, from a new FTC lawsuit over Amazon's ad pricing to a set migration date for one of Amazon's ad formats, a fulfillment discount, and FBM policy changes. Amazon also confirmed a delivery surcharge already live on real listings and shipped several dashboard improvements. Here is what changed and what you should do about it. 📌 Contents FTC Sues Amazon Over Advertising Pricing Practices Amazon Sets Migration Timeline From Product Collections to Sponsored Brands Collections Amazon Cuts MCF Fulfillment Rates 35% for TikTok Shop Orders Amazon Will Deactivate Individual FBM Offers Instead of Full Accounts Amazon Can Now Override FBM Handling Times in the UK Amazon's Sub Same Day Surcharge Is Now Showing Up on Real Listings Amazon Ads Agent Is Now Live in the Ad Console Amazon Adds Four New Filters and Search Improvements to Manage Promotions Amazon Adds Campaign-Specific Bulksheet Downloads   1. FTC Sues Amazon Over Advertising Pricing Practices The Federal Trade Commission has sued Amazon, joined by more than 20 U.S. states, over its advertising marketplace, according to Reuters. The central claim is that Amazon secretly raised the minimum price sellers had to pay to place ads promoting their products. Amazon Ads has become one of the most important levers brands use on the platform, and also one of the hardest to fully audit. CPCs move for real reasons: category competition, seasonality, Prime events, and conversion rates all play a role, so a rising CPC on its own is not evidence of anything. What the lawsuit raises is a separate question: whether some of that cost came from changes sellers never had visibility into, rather than from the auction itself. The case will likely take time to resolve, but it's a reminder to track CPCs against TACoS, organic sales, placement performance, and keyword-level efficiency, rather than just watching whether ad sales went up. A number without a clear read on cost per outcome makes it hard to catch a change like this early. Read more here by Nikolai Tahmin 2. Amazon Sets Migration Timeline From Product Collections to Sponsored Brands Collections Amazon has confirmed that Product Collections will be retired in February 2027, with Sponsored Brands collections taking its place. Sponsored Brands collections is an existing Sponsored Brands ad format that supports up to 10 related products in a single ad, built either as an automatic collection, where products are selected based on shopping signals, or a manual collection, where the advertiser picks the products directly. The migration starts earlier than the retirement date: beginning in September 2026, eligible Product Collections ads will receive migration recommendations inside Campaign Manager and through the Amazon Ads API. Advertisers can review each recommended Sponsored Brands collections ad, edit the product selection before it goes live, and accept recommendations one at a time or in bulk. Anything not migrated by February 2027 gets moved automatically, but Amazon is recommending an early migration to avoid a rushed transition later. The practical step now is to start checking Campaign Manager for migration recommendations and building new campaigns directly in Sponsored Brands collections instead of Product Collections. Read more here by Noah Wickham 3. Amazon Cuts MCF Fulfillment Rates 35% for TikTok Shop Orders Amazon is running a live promotion that cuts Standard and Expedited Multichannel Fulfillment rates by 35% for TikTok Shop orders shipped in the US. MCF uses the same fulfillment centers, inventory pool, and delivery network that already powers FBA, so this effectively extends FBA-level fulfillment to TikTok Shop orders at a discount. The detail sellers need to catch is what happens underneath: for any order attributed to TikTok Shop, this 35% promo rate replaces the 2026 Preferred Pricing discount, so that discount doesn't apply to those orders. Those same units, however, still count toward the volume thresholds that decide a seller's Preferred Pricing tier, and they don't draw down the Preferred Pricing benefit cap or the FBA credit cap. In practice, TikTok Shop volume can move a seller into a stronger Preferred Pricing tier on every other order shipped, without touching the ceiling that limits how much of that discount can be used. This is worth acting on now: route TikTok Shop orders through a supported integration partner, keep inventory in a single MCF pool, and track whether the added volume moves your account into a stronger tier before year-end. Read more here by Vanessa Hung 4. Amazon Will Deactivate Individual FBM Offers Instead of Full Accounts Starting August 31, Amazon changed how it responds to FBM offers that put Account Health at risk: instead of penalizing the entire account, it will deactivate only the individual offer causing the problem. The policies under review include Cancellation Rate, Late Shipment Rate, Order Defect Rate, and On-Time Delivery Rate. Amazon sends a warning email ahead of any deactivation, laying out the issue and the steps needed to resolve it, and deactivated offers can be reviewed under Other Policy Violations in the Account Health dashboard. Other active listings and a seller's overall Account Health score stay untouched. This is a meaningful shift for FBM sellers who have previously seen one weak SKU threaten an entire account's standing. The practical move is to check the Account Health dashboard regularly so a warning email doesn't go unnoticed, since the window to fix the issue before deactivation is limited. Read more here by Will Haire 5. Amazon Can Now Override FBM Handling Times in the UK As of September 1, Amazon has started taking more control over FBM handling times in the UK. If Amazon's data shows a seller consistently dispatching an SKU faster than the handling time they set, and that gap holds for more than 30 days, Amazon can automatically shorten it through Automated Handling Time. The reasoning: Amazon says 90% of UK FBM orders already dispatch within one day, and a slower delivery promise than necessary can hurt both conversion and a seller's competitiveness for the Featured Offer. That logic makes commercial sense from a shopper's point of view, since a customer comparing two delivery dates has no way to know one seller built in deliberate buffer. The risk is that Amazon can see the historical dispatch data but not the operational reason behind it, whether that's warehouse capacity, weekend orders, peak periods, or carrier collection schedules. Sellers running meaningful FBM volume in the UK should check their SKU-level handling times now, before Amazon decides what the promise should be instead of just measuring whether it was met. Read more here by James Howard 6. Amazon's Sub Same Day Surcharge Is Now Showing Up on Real Listings A seller spotted a new surcharge for Sub Same Day delivery live on an actual product listing, which confirms something that had only been signaled through an internal notice until now. Sub Same Day delivery, a fulfillment speed shoppers could previously access at no extra cost once their order passed the basket size minimum, now carries an added charge visible to the shopper at checkout. This sighting lines up with a notice Amazon sent sellers a couple of weeks earlier, inviting them to bid for Sub Same Day placement inside fulfillment centers. Together, the two pieces suggest Amazon has already started converting its fastest delivery tier into a paid, competitive placement, rather than this being a future plan still in testing. Sellers who compete on delivery speed should check their own listings for this surcharge directly, since it appears to be live before any formal announcement. Both the shopper-facing charge and the fulfillment center bidding option are worth tracking closely if speed is part of your value proposition. Read more here by Jon Derkits 7. Amazon Ads Agent Is Now Live in the Ad Console Amazon has moved Ads Agent into the Ad Console, giving its AI-powered Marketing Cloud analysis tool a new home and a new interface, while keeping the underlying AI features the same. The most useful additions are organizational: session history is now saved, so advertisers can return to earlier AMC analyses instead of starting each question from zero. Conversations can be grouped into folders by project or campaign, important sessions can be pinned, and closed sessions can be reopened at any time. None of this changes what Ads Agent can analyze, but it changes how usable that analysis is over time. What used to be a single, disconnected conversation now works closer to an ongoing workspace, which helps teams running recurring AMC queries across multiple campaigns. Read more here by Ivan Marynych 8. Amazon Adds Four New Filters and Search Improvements to Manage Promotions Amazon shipped four updates to the Manage Promotions dashboard, based on seller feedback. Promotion type, status, and store filters now sit above the results table instead of being buried in a side panel, which makes it faster to narrow down a large list of promotions. The page also now remembers the filters you had selected last time, so you're not resetting them on every visit. A new claim code search lets you paste a code straight into the search bar to jump to its Buy X Get Y promotion instead of scrolling to find it. The dashboard also defaults to the store you're currently signed into, pre-filtering promotions automatically rather than showing every store at once. None of these are large changes individually, but together they cut real time out of managing promotions across a big catalog or multiple stores. Read more here by Mansour Norouzi 9. Amazon Adds Campaign-Specific Bulksheet Downloads Amazon has added the option to download bulksheets for only the specific campaigns a seller selects, instead of exporting the entire account every time. It's a small operational change, but one that saves real time for teams managing bulk edits across a large catalog of campaigns. Previously, sellers working on a handful of campaigns still had to export and filter through the full account bulksheet just to make a small set of changes. That extra step adds up for teams doing bulk edits often. Sellers who regularly export bulksheets to make targeted changes should switch to the campaign-specific download, since it removes a step from a routine task without changing how bulksheets work. Read more here by Prem Gupta That's nine updates across advertising, fulfillment, and account health this week, and the FTC lawsuit is the one worth watching longest given how much of Amazon's ad economics remain opaque to sellers. Subscribe to the ANavigator blog to get next week's digest as soon as it's published. 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

Amazon launched Sponsored Brands Collections in April 2026 as the direct replacement for the legacy Product Collections format. The old format stops being supported in February 2027. If you are still running Product Collection campaigns, the migration window is open now, and the performance case for moving is strong. What Changed and Why It Matters The legacy Product Collections format allowed up to three ASINs per ad, required a custom headline, and let advertisers upload lifestyle images for top-of-search placements. That format is being retired. Sponsored Brands Collections replaces it with two formats, Automatic and Manual, both supporting three to ten ASINs per ad instead of three. Early test data from Amazon shows the new format delivers 3.3x higher click-through rate, 14.2% higher ROAS, and 81.9% more orders per search compared to legacy Product Collections. The reason for that lift is structural. More products per ad unit means broader catalog exposure in a single placement. And when shoppers reach the continuation experience, either a dynamically created landing page or a Brand Store, same-brand conversion reaches 25.8% versus 15.9% on a single product detail page, with 2.4x more products from the brand viewed per session. Automatic vs. Manual Collections The two formats serve different needs. Automatic Collections let Amazon's AI dynamically group the most relevant products from your catalog based on keyword targets and shopper search queries. Titles and landing pages are auto-generated and update continuously. You do not need to manually select ASINs or build multiple campaigns. Use this when you want scale with minimal ongoing management, particularly across large catalogs where manually maintaining collection groupings is operationally impractical. Manual Collections let you choose which three to ten ASINs appear in the ad, with the option to write your own headline or let Amazon generate one. Targeting supports both keyword and product targeting, unlike Automatic Collections, which are keyword-only. Use this when you want control over which products are grouped, for thematic collections, hero product groupings, or category-specific campaigns. Both formats link individual products to their product detail pages, with the brand logo and ad title linking to the landing page or Brand Store. The Migration Timeline You can start migrating now. In September 2026, Amazon will add recommended migrations directly inside Campaign Manager with a bulk migration option. Go to the Sponsored Brands tab to review and launch recommended replacements. In February 2027, Product Collections stop being supported entirely. Eligible campaigns with exactly three ASINs will be automatically transitioned to Manual Collections. Campaigns with fewer than three ASINs will not auto-migrate and will simply stop running. That last point is critical: any Product Collection campaign built around one or two ASINs will go dark in February 2027 with no automatic fallback. If those campaigns are still live and unreviewed, they disappear without warning. What to Do Now Three actions before September's bulk migration tool arrives. First, audit your active Sponsored Brands Product Collection campaigns and flag any with fewer than three ASINs. These need manual attention, either add ASINs to qualify for migration or shift the strategy to a different ad type before February. Second, decide which campaigns warrant Automatic versus Manual Collections. High-volume keyword campaigns across a broad catalog are natural candidates for Automatic. Curated groupings, seasonal collections, bundled products, and category leaders are better suited to Manual, where you control the ASIN selection. Third, review your ASIN pool for each campaign. Since Automatic Collections dynamically select from your catalog, the quality of what goes in matters. Include products with strong conversion rates, competitive pricing, and solid review counts. Weak ASINs in the pool dilute the AI's ability to surface the best combination. The September bulk migration tool will make the mechanical part easy. The strategic decisions- which format, which ASINs, which groupings- are the work that needs to happen before then. 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