2025 was a rough year for investors in The Trade Desk . The technology platform for advertisers looking to escape the walled gardens fell 67.7%, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence. Slowing revenue growth amid a changing landscape in digital advertising on television, along with the adoption of artificial intelligence ( AI), has led investors to bail on the stock.
"We're doing more than just building tools," said Kelly MacLean, vice president of engineering, science and product for Amazon Ads. "We're building a one-stop shop, empowering you to make smarter decisions to drive better results across the entire advertising journey."
E.l.f. Cosmetics wants to inject more performance into its Twitch advertising with the new in-stream shoppable integration. The capability is powered by Amazon Ads, allowing E.l.f. to draw on the e-commerce giant's troves of retail media data to better target and measure campaigns. The timing aligns with the gear up to the holiday season, a critical sales window for retail brands.
Amazon's ad ambitions now reach well beyond the simple "sponsor my product" paradigm. Its presence spans audio, gaming, sports, and streaming content - all areas where it can both insert itself and monetize. More lucratively, Amazon controls trillions of data points from its retail business, giving it a unique ability to connect exposure to actual purchasing behavior (i.e., measurement). Combine content reach with direct shopper signals, and you get a formidable pitch to advertisers.
Over the last three years, Amazon Ads has mapped an incredible trajectory - robust year-over-year growth, elevation to the brand's 2nd-most profitable vertical outside e-commerce, and the newfound strength to take on the long-established competitors in the category. But the biggest challenge still lay ahead, in the form of an audience our brand has never courted before: small business owners.
"The new agentic AI tool is powered by Amazon's extensive retail insights which enable an in-depth understanding of the advertiser's brand and products, including what features make a product stand out," the company wrote in its press release. Amazon said the tool uses "customer shopper signals" to triangulate information from an advertiser's pages and website to come up with ad creative.
