Amazon have launched Brand+ AI optimised SVOD advertising

Amazon Ads has rolled out Brand+, a new AI-driven tool that combines trillions of shopper, user behaviour signals across Amazon to reach users with your brand when it makes best sense. While positioned as a brand awareness tool, Brand+ can engage consumers throughout the entire funnel across Amazon’s premium inventory, including Prime Video and Twitch. Some advertisers in early testing have reported a 10%+ lift in sales and a 70% jump in traffic and according to ChannelX, it has transparent reporting which is quite different to other Advertising platforms equivalents.

The promise of AI-powered advertising is efficiency—advertisers have less need to manually optimise campaigns whilst the AI drives smarter targeting and better results. But often the downside of this is the lack of control and visibility. These AI systems operate as black boxes, meaning advertisers have limited visibility into where their ads are placed and why.That could be a problem for many advertisers as brand safety could be at stake.

We’ve already seen this issue with Google’s Performance Max (PMax) campaigns. They offer advertisers broad reach across Google’s ecosystem, but many brands have called out the lack of transparency, with limited insights into where ads actually appear. In response to growing concerns, Google has made some tweaks like introducing methods of excluding targets (brand targeting) but advertisers are still flying partially blind.

This isn’t just a Google or Amazon issue—it’s an industry-wide challenge. The large advertising platforms are investing heavily into AI and w do believe it’s in advertisers best interests but should be approached partially with a skeptical lens. Many brands find their ads running alongside questionable or outright harmful content, even when using brand safety tools so removing that transparency is a worry. AI-driven placements are supposed to be smart, but in reality, they are still developing so should be tested ongoing alongside your original campaigns.

At the end of the day, AI-driven ad tools like Brand+ and PMax are incredibly powerful, but they’re not foolproof. Advertisers need to balance the convenience of automation with the reality that brand safety and transparency.