Amazon Marketplace Policy and Advertising Updates

Amazon’s AI-powered Prompts feature for Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands campaigns moved from open beta to general availability in the U.S. on March 25, 2026, with charging now part of standard CPC billing. Prompts work as an automatic enhancement layered onto existing campaigns, using Amazon’s first-party signals from your product detail pages, Brand Store, and campaign performance data to surface contextual product information to shoppers at specific decision moments during the shopping journey.

All Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands campaigns are automatically enrolled without any additional setup. You can review, manage, and pause specific prompts from within each campaign via Campaign, then Ad Group, then Ads, then the Prompts tab. Since billing begins at GA, this is now a live cost item on every active campaign. Prompts are only as strong as the listing copy they draw from, which makes listing optimization a direct PPC cost lever.

The Sponsored Brands Collections format completed its rollout in mid-March 2026 with two distinct creation options visible inside the console when building a new SB campaign and selecting Collections.

Automatic mode: Amazon’s AI selects products from your catalog based on your keyword targets and the shopper’s actual query. It generates the ad title and builds the landing page dynamically. You provide your brand name and logo; Amazon handles product selection. In Automatic mode you can exclude up to 1,000 ASINs you do not want shown, but cannot control the final selection beyond exclusions.

Manual mode: You choose which products appear. The format still uses AI-generated landing pages, but product selection stays in your hands. A minimum of 3 ASINs and maximum of 10 applies to both modes. These ads are also eligible to appear inside Rufus. The most critical structural note: you cannot change the collection type after an ad group is created. This is a permanent decision per ad group. Brands managing PPC campaign structure should plan ad group architecture before building.

Amazon updated its Business Solutions Agreement to include the first formal Agent Policy in the platform’s history, announced February 17, 2026, and effective March 4. The policy creates a new contractual category called “Agent” covering any automated software or AI tool accessing Amazon services on a seller’s behalf. Three baseline obligations apply: agents must identify themselves as automated systems at all times, comply with the policy continuously, and cease access immediately if Amazon requests it.

The reach extends across the entire seller software ecosystem. PPC management platforms, pricing tools, restock tools, FBA reimbursement services, and any application interacting programmatically with Seller Central or the Amazon Ads API now has explicit contractual obligations that did not exist before March 4. Amazon may restrict access to non-compliant agents without appeal. The update also adds AI and machine-learning development restrictions, enhanced reverse-engineering protections, and a new binding arbitration clause.

Commingling, the practice of pooling identical products from multiple sellers and fulfilling from the geographically closest unit regardless of source, ended permanently for all inventory shipped on or after March 31, 2026. Every unit in Amazon’s fulfillment network is now tracked back to its originating seller account. For brand owners this eliminates a long-standing risk: a counterfeit or poorly stored unit from a different seller being dispatched to your customer under your listing.

Labeling changes for brand owners: Sellers enrolled in Amazon Brand Registry with the Brand Representative selling role no longer need to apply FNSKU labels to products carrying manufacturer barcodes such as UPC, EAN, or ISBN. Amazon uses virtual tracking to attribute units to the correct seller. Products without a scannable manufacturer barcode must still carry FNSKU stickers. Resellers who are not Brand Representatives must continue applying FNSKU labels. Amazon is waiving low-inventory-level fees at the FNSKU level during the transition period. You can read more in our guide to Amazon inventory management.

Amazon’s Brand Stores management API moved from beta to general availability in February 2026, giving all Brand Store owners the ability to programmatically manage their Amazon storefronts at scale for the first time. The API allows brands to retrieve and update product content and selection across Brand Store pages and submit store updates for moderation programmatically. For brands managing stores across multiple markets or running frequent seasonal campaigns, this replaces the manual page-by-page update process with a single workflow.

The GA release followed Amazon’s launch of section-level performance metrics for Brand Stores in beta on January 16, 2026, providing granular engagement data covering renders, viewable impressions, clicks, and click-through rate for each individual component within a storefront. The combination of section-level measurement and programmatic management creates a proper testing framework for Brand Store optimization that was not possible before.

Amazon began rolling out the new AI-powered Sponsored Brands Product Collections format to all U.S. advertisers from January 28, 2026. Custom headlines, lifestyle images, and branded creative assets have been removed from the format. Amazon now dynamically surfaces key product details and visuals directly from your product listings. The format requires a minimum of 3 ASINs per ad and supports up to 10. Existing campaigns with only one or two ASINs can continue running but no new ad groups can be added to those campaigns.

For brands with large catalogs this opens up cross-promotion opportunities by surfacing complementary products in a single ad unit. For brands with narrow product lines it requires restructuring campaign architecture to meet the new minimum. Single-ASIN Sponsored Brands strategies need to migrate to Sponsored Products or Sponsored Brands Video formats. This change connects directly to how your campaign structure needs to be organized going forward.

Fulfilled by Merchant sellers now have four calendar days, extended from two business days, to inspect returned items and issue a refund decision. The extra time allows for better documentation, photography of damage evidence, and more careful evaluation before issuing or disputing a refund. If a seller does not process the return within four calendar days, Amazon automatically issues a refund to the buyer. Once an automatic refund is issued, the SAFE-T reimbursement pathway is severely restricted. This matters most for sellers managing their own fulfillment. Read more about FBA vs FBM trade-offs to understand the operational context.

U.S. FBA fulfillment fee increases took effect January 15, 2026, following the fee-stable year of 2025. The average increase of $0.08 per unit was announced October 15, 2025. While Amazon framed the increase as less than 0.5 percent of a typical item’s selling price, the real impact depends on price point. For a product at $12.99, the eight-cent increase represents roughly 3 to 4 percent of contribution margin where FBA costs already compress margins. Note that this baseline increase is now compounded by the April 17 fuel surcharge of 3.5 percent, making 2026 one of the most fee-heavy years for FBA sellers in recent history.

Referral fees were reduced for home products, pet clothing, groceries, and vitamins. European FBA fees in Germany, the UK, France, Italy, and Spain dropped by approximately 0.26 to 0.32 euros per parcel from February 1, 2026, driven by Amazon’s need to remain competitive against Shein and Temu on small-parcel economics. If you are evaluating selling globally on Amazon, the European fee reductions make this a stronger moment to consider EU expansion.

From January 1, 2026, Amazon discontinued all prep and item-labeling services for FBA shipments across the U.S. store, covering standard FBA, AWD, Amazon Global Logistics, Amazon SEND, and the Supply Chain Portal. The option to pay Amazon to apply poly bags, bubble wrap, dunnage, or FNSKU labels at a fulfillment center no longer exists. Every unit must arrive fully prepared and correctly labeled before entering the Amazon supply chain. This is not a phase-out: it applied from day one with no grace period for legacy workflows.

Shipments created after January 1 that arrive unprepared or incorrectly labeled are ineligible for reimbursement if units are damaged or become untraceable during receiving. Amazon has closed the reimbursement safety net for non-compliant units. Early 2026 data showed a 30 to 40 percent surge in sellers seeking certified 3PL and freight forwarder arrangements to handle prep, with typical cost increases of $0.15 to $0.40 per unit. Read our guide on how to send products to Amazon correctly.

Amazon implemented a shopping-signal enhanced last-touch attribution methodology for all view-based campaign measurement from January 1, 2026, affecting Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Display vCPM campaigns, and Amazon DSP across 28 global markets. The previous model applied conversion credit broadly to all ad views within a 14-day window. The new methodology uses machine learning to evaluate placement context, browsing behavior, and shopping journey stage. It focuses credit on ad views during genuine brand discovery moments and applies a shorter attribution window to views occurring later in a known purchase funnel.

Amazon introduced dual reporting through a “standard” metric family using the new methodology and an “all views” metric family preserving the historical 14-day window for comparison. Advertisers seeing sudden ROAS drops in Sponsored Display vCPM or upper-funnel Sponsored Brands campaigns in January 2026 are largely seeing this attribution model change, not a real change in campaign effectiveness. The metrics changed; the underlying performance may not have.

Amazon’s advertising platform now operates on a predictive budget model that allows the algorithm to exceed a campaign’s declared daily budget by up to 25 percent when it identifies high purchase intent among shoppers. The platform can also redistribute funds across campaigns within the same portfolio based on real-time performance signals, and may deploy a significant portion of the daily budget early in the day when morning conversion probability is predicted to be high.

For accounts with carefully modeled monthly advertising spend tied to cash flow planning, this behavior can silently produce meaningful overspend across a large campaign portfolio. If you are working on reducing PPC costs, the dynamic budget behavior is one of the first places to audit. Read more in our guide to Amazon PPC campaign structure and bidding strategies.

Amazon announced Ads Agent, built on Amazon Bedrock, as a conversational AI assistant embedded directly within Amazon Marketing Cloud. Ads Agent supports full analytics query generation through natural language. A user describes what they want to analyze in plain English and Ads Agent writes the SQL query, runs it, and surfaces the result. What previously required an analyst building complex queries manually over several hours can now be completed in a conversation. This connects directly to full-funnel Amazon advertising strategy since AMC’s path-to-purchase data unlocks cross-channel budget decisions.

Amazon Accelerate 2025 delivered three updates that collectively represent the most significant shift in seller analytics access in years.

Amazon Marketing Cloud is now open to every seller. Previously accessible only to brands with active DSP contracts or agency relationships, AMC became directly available through the Ads Console for any seller running Sponsored Products, with no partner, rep, or DSP commitment required. No-code query templates and Ads Agent (launched in beta) reduced the SQL knowledge barrier that had kept AMC out of reach for most seller-side teams.

Custom Analytics Workbench. A free Seller Central tool with over 100 metrics lets sellers build personalized reports spanning advertising, sales, and operational data in a single interface. Previously, creating a combined view required exporting from multiple separate reports and joining them manually.

Agentic Seller Assistant replaces Project Amelia. The new agentic version can understand context, set goals, and take proactive actions including monitoring inventory levels, preparing shipment recommendations, and surfacing Account Health issues before they escalate.

As part of the July 2025 lab compliance overhaul, Amazon introduced a specific additional requirement for the toys and children’s products category from September 3. Sellers must now complete annual testing or documented verification through a compliant Testing, Inspection and Certification provider on a recurring basis, not just at product launch. The provider must be CPSC-accepted for U.S. marketplace sales. Lab booking lead times typically run four to eight weeks. Review our guide to Amazon label requirements for the full compliance picture on product documentation.

Amazon changed the seller feedback system so that buyers can leave a star rating without any written comment. The standard dispute pathway through Feedback Manager no longer applies to star-only ratings. Sellers can only pursue disputes through the “Report a Violation” route, which requires a specific, identifiable policy violation rather than a general disagreement. A silent one-star rating with no written explanation is now permanent with no standard removal route. See our guide to removing reviews from Amazon for what options remain available. The key shift is that getting better reviews proactively is now the only meaningful lever.

Amazon published a Suspended Validation Labs list and made clear that compliance documentation from any lab on that list is treated as no documentation at all. A certificate from a low-cost local testing facility, particularly non-internationally-accredited labs commonly used in China, now results in listing suppression and Account Health penalties as if no certificate had been submitted. The policy directly targets a longstanding shortcut where sellers met Amazon’s document requirement on paper while using facilities that did not meet the underlying safety standards. See our full Amazon label and compliance requirements guide.

Amazon expanded Amazon Marketing Cloud‘s data history from 13 months to five full years of retail purchase data through the Retail Purchases dataset, available in the paid AMC Features suite with a 60-day free trial. The five-year lookback dramatically increases the value of customer lifetime value analysis and seasonal trend modeling, giving advertisers context that was previously impossible through platform-native tools.

On the same date, Amazon introduced a New-to-Brand (NTB) audience feature for Sponsored Brands, allowing advertisers to apply bid boosts specifically to shoppers who had not purchased from the brand in the prior 12 months. Advertisers who applied a bid boost of 100 percent or more for NTB shoppers saw twice as many orders from new customers on average. This makes it possible to run acquisition-focused campaigns separately from retention campaigns. Understanding the difference between branded and non-branded keywords is essential context for building NTB audience strategy.

From April 14, any sharp item arriving at an Amazon fulfillment center without proper puncture-resistant packaging is destroyed on receipt with no corrective process, no reimbursement, and no notification window. The policy covers knives, blades, tools, and any product presenting a puncture hazard. Unlike most compliance changes that allow a grace period, Amazon applied this rule with immediate binary consequences: units that comply are accepted, units that do not comply are destroyed. The seller is billed for the destruction. Always check our Amazon packaging and label requirements before shipping any sharp or hazardous items.

Two significant seller tools launched on January 27, 2025. First, Amazon made Amazon Marketing Cloud reporting accessible via a new enhanced dashboard with real-time hourly metrics and audience-building capabilities for both Sponsored Ads and DSP campaigns. This was the first step toward the full AMC open access that completed at Amazon Accelerate in September.

The second launch was the Inventory Defect and Reimbursement (IDR) Portal, which replaced fragmented reimbursement tracking with a single dashboard covering warehouse losses, damages, and customer return claims. Claim statuses are labeled Eligible for Claim, In Progress, or Resolved, making it significantly easier to manage the 60-day filing window without losing track of active claims.

Amazon began enforcing three simultaneous title standards across most product categories, with automated suppression for listings failing to comply within a 14-day correction window. A 200-character cap applies across most categories. Special characters including exclamation marks, question marks, and underscores are banned unless they form part of a registered brand name. Any word repeated more than twice in a title context is a violation, with singular and plural forms counted as the same word.

Since product titles directly feed into Amazon PPC keyword relevance signals, non-compliant titles that are automatically corrected by Amazon often reduce ad campaign performance by lowering relevance match scores. This makes a proper title audit an important part of listing optimization that connects directly to paid and organic performance.

Amazon held U.S. referral fees and standard FBA fulfillment fees flat for the entirety of 2025, the first fee-stable year in several years. Non-peak FBA fees for apparel stayed unchanged from January 15. Amazon also waived inbound placement service fees for new parent ASINs enrolled in the FBA New Selection Program during qualifying shipment periods, giving new product launches a meaningful cost advantage. Inbound placement service fees on large bulky items with minimal shipment splits were reduced by approximately $0.58 per unit. For sellers who had been adjusting pricing annually to absorb Amazon’s fee increases, 2025 provided a year to rebuild margin. That margin is now under fresh pressure from the 2026 fee increase and the April 2026 fuel surcharge. Our guide to how much it costs to sell on Amazon has a full breakdown of fee layers.

The Conversion Path Report opened to all sellers on January 13, 2025. The report tracks a shopper’s full advertising touchpoints across a 30-day window before purchase, covering Sponsored Products, Sponsored Display, Sponsored Brands, Sponsored TV, and Amazon DSP. It reveals the sequence of ad impressions a buyer encountered before converting rather than attributing the sale solely to the last-click event. For sellers running multiple campaign types, this report frequently shows that awareness and consideration campaigns running at what appears to be poor ROAS are the first touchpoint in a significant portion of eventual conversions. This is the cornerstone of a full-funnel Amazon advertising strategy.

On the same date, Amazon added an AI-powered SQL generator to Amazon Marketing Cloud, allowing advertisers to write complex audience and analytics queries using plain English descriptions. This democratized the most powerful analytics layer in Amazon’s advertising stack for teams without dedicated SQL analysts.

This pair of changes represents the single largest financial hit to FBA sellers in 2025, arriving in two stages that many sellers missed until they noticed differences in their reimbursement figures. From January 9, the window for filing lost or damaged inventory claims was cut from 18 months to 60 days. Sellers who were not actively auditing FBA reconciliation reports monthly lost access to every pending claim older than two months without any transition period. The IDR Portal launched on January 27 provides the central dashboard for tracking these claims. Using a dedicated Amazon reimbursement tool or service is now more important than ever to catch claims within the 60-day window.

From March 10, the reimbursement basis shifted from selling price to manufacturing cost only. Shipping, packaging, branding, prep, and margin are all excluded. A branded product retailing at $40 with a $10 production cost now receives roughly a $10 payout instead of the $32 to $38 a seller might previously have received. Industry analysis puts the average reduction at 65 to 75 percent. Sellers can input manufacturing cost data via the “Manage Your Manufacturing Cost” page in Seller Central. Where left blank, Amazon estimates conservatively. Reviewing your Amazon inventory management processes is essential context for minimizing future reimbursement claims.

Rufus launched in beta in early 2024 but became a genuine advertising strategy concern during 2025 as adoption scaled sharply. By Q4 2025, Amazon reported that Rufus had 250 to 300 million active users with interactions up 210 percent year over year and was on track to contribute over $12 billion in incremental annualized sales. From January 2025, Amazon integrated Sponsored Products placements into Rufus conversations, meaning paid ads now appear within the conversational AI interface alongside organic recommendations.

Rufus surfaces results based on shopper intent and product context, not keyword match. Listings with weak benefit statements, incomplete product attributes, or inconsistent messaging across title, bullets, and A+ Content are less likely to appear in Rufus responses regardless of bid level. An “Account Memory” feature introduced in late 2025 incorporates a shopper’s purchase history, Prime Video viewing, and Audible listening into recommendations. Listings must be complete, specific, and benefit-focused to win in Rufus results. Amazon listing optimization is now simultaneously a PPC and organic task. The “Help Me Decide” comparison feature launched in October 2025 means listings with clear differentiation outperform generic ones in head-to-head AI comparisons. This connects to how the Amazon ranking algorithm is shifting toward intent-based relevance.

Amazon extended the 2025 holiday return window to January 31, 2026, covering purchases made between November 1 and December 31. The 92-day window pushed cash flow finalization for Q4 revenue into Q1 for sellers with high holiday sales volumes. Alongside this, Amazon introduced additional per-return fees for products that consistently exceed their category-level return rate thresholds. The policy targets listings with misleading descriptions or image sets that drive “not as described” returns, which Amazon’s data suggests account for approximately 40 percent of total return volume. Read the full Amazon return policy guide for how this affects your seller obligations.