With 2026 fast approaching, Amazon Ads Execs have shared predictions for the coming year. We spoke to Kate McCagg, Global Head of Amazon Ads Brand Innovation Lab and Phil Christer, Managing Director Amazon Ads UK for their thoughts on the year ahead:
Insights and Creativity
The ‘science’ of media and the ‘art’ of creativity are often considered separate things. But the most compelling campaigns I’m seeing are where audience signals actually inspire the creative process—not just validate it afterward.
The breakthrough moments happen when creative teams genuinely embrace customer insights because they see how it unlocks ideas they wouldn’t have discovered otherwise. When we only create from our own perspective, we’re designing for a limited audience, assuming they will like something because we do.
Next year, and beyond, we must ensure we continue to come back to the passion points of customers and the potential points of friction that we can help solve within an advertising campaign.
These insights keeps us grounded in things that are real for the customer, as opposed to something that might feel interruptive when it shows up as an ad within their experience.
– Kate McCagg, Global Head of Amazon Ads Brand Innovation Lab
Outcome-based buying will dictate streaming TV ad spend
In 2026, advertisers will increasingly measure the success of their STV campaigns based on business outcomes likes sales, sign-ups, and bookings, not only traditional metrics like reach, frequency, and brand favourability.
This shift will mean streaming TV ads will compete for performance as well as brand budgets.
– Phil Christer, Managing Director Amazon Ads UK
Contextual advertising reinvents itself with scene specific STV ads
While contextual advertising might have been around for more than 20 years, new technology will see the advent of hyper relevant contextual advertising in the STV space. This means that if you pause your favourite action film mid-way through a scene showing the hero chasing a villain across an exotic island, you’ll be served an ad offering flights to that location with real time prices and flight times specific to your local airport and carriers.
– Phil Christer, Managing Director Amazon Ads UK
AI driving performance
AI in advertising will have a much bigger impact behind the scenes, finding the right audiences, improving campaign performance, and continuously optimising to deliver measurable business outcomes. The tools will be able to process the vast amounts of insights involved in campaigns, and surface patterns and recommendations that would otherwise take significant time to spot manually or might be missed.
This will make advanced analytics accessible to more marketers through natural language and enable them to conduct complex campaign analysis faster.
– Phil Christer, Managing Director Amazon Ads UK
