AI recommendations are becoming the new digital shelf as people search and shop within LLM chatbots. The change has left the ad industry scrambling to determine what an ad strategy looks like without clicks, landing pages or traditional search results.
At the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity this year, Amazon announced what it’s calling a new ad format: Alexa+ Agentic Ads. With this framework, Amazon users see an ad and can complete a purchase all without leaving the ad — from food delivery to concert tickets. What makes it agentic is the LLM’s ability to hold what’s supposed to be a natural conversation with a customer rather than advertiser scripts and prompts to answer customer questions, said Charlotte Maines, vp of devices, content and advertising at Amazon.
These announcements — timed to Prime Day — have brands like Papa Johns pizza and The Orchard, a Sony subsidiary ticket purchasing company, signed on to beta test. (Neither Papa Johns nor The Orchard responded to requests for comment.) For now, Amazon and its beta partners are working out the kinks — things like success metrics and transaction completion rates — to prove the value of the agentic ads. Amazon would not divulge pricing.
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