October 5, 2026

Amazon Ads for DTC brands, and what Alexa for Shopping (Rufus) changes

Sell on Amazon when a product still earns enough after Amazon's referral and fulfillment fees to pay for ads. Enroll in Brand Registry either way, since resellers can list your products without you. Start with Sponsored Products, judge each campaign on ACoS against its breakeven, and judge the channel on TACoS against contribution margin.

In the US, Amazon renamed its shopping assistant Rufus to Alexa for Shopping on 13 May 2026, and says shoppers can now ask it questions in the main search bar. It answers from your listing, reviews and customer questions, and your sponsored ads can serve inside it. Amazon's UK and European announcements still call it Rufus.

Should a DTC brand sell on Amazon?

Margin after Amazon's fees

Amazon takes a referral fee on every sale, a percentage of the total price or a minimum, whichever is greater. On the US fee page, home and kitchen pays 15% with a $0.30 minimum. Some categories are tiered: beauty, health and personal care pays 8% on items up to $10 and 15% above. The Professional plan costs $39.99 a month.

Fulfillment by Amazon adds a fee based on price, weight and dimensions, plus monthly storage, a surcharge on stock held over 181 days, returns processing and an inbound placement fee. Other marketplaces set their own. The UK Professional plan is £25 a month excluding VAT, and Amazon.ae is waiving its monthly fee for a limited time.

An illustration with made-up costs: a brand sells a $40 serum in the US. The referral fee is 15%, or $6. Assume $6.50 for FBA, $1.50 a unit for storage, returns and other fees, and $10 cost of goods. That leaves $16, or 40%, before ads, so breakeven ACoS is 40%. On its own site the serum might keep $22 after $6 shipping, $1.20 in payment fees and $0.80 of returns. Amazon costs $6 a unit more, so it pays when ad cost per Amazon order runs at least $6 below your site's, or when those orders wouldn't have happened on your site.

Channel conflict

Price. Amazon shows price history on product pages in the US, UK, Canada and India, and Alexa for Shopping compares prices across Amazon and the web. Keep one base price and give each channel its own bundles or pack sizes.
Resellers. If others sell your products, they compete with you for the Featured Offer (the Buy Box). Amazon only lets you advertise products eligible for it.
The customer. Amazon buyers stay Amazon's. Brand Analytics gives brand owners aggregate data, not contacts, so keep subscriptions and email-driven repeat sales on your site.
Shop Direct. In the US, staying off Amazon may not keep you off it. Shop Direct shows products from other stores in Amazon search and in the assistant, over 100 million from more than 400,000 merchants as of March 2026, and Buy for Me lets Amazon's agent buy eligible ones from the merchant's website. Merchants can send a feed or opt out.

Brand Registry comes first

Brand Registry is free, even if you don't sell on Amazon. You need a pending or registered trademark from the office of a country with an Amazon store, and a logo with your brand name on the product or packaging. It lists Sponsored Brands, A+ Content, Brand Stores, Brand Analytics, Amazon Attribution, the Brand Referral Bonus and infringement reporting as benefits. Sponsored Brands, Brand Analytics and Attribution also need a selling or vendor account.

Amazon's ad products and what each is for

At unBoxed (28 to 30 September 2026), Amazon said in its event recap that Amazon Ads Agent brings together what was formerly the DSP and Ads Console. Its Sponsored Display page now says Sponsored Display is known as display ads, and its Amazon DSP page says DSP has evolved into Amazon Ads Agent, with its programmatic tools now in DVA+. Existing campaigns keep running. DVA+ is the simplified display, video and audio buying inside Amazon Ads Agent, and Amazon's launch announcement puts it in extended closed beta in the US, with general availability targeted for Q1 2027.

Product	What it's for	Pricing and access
Sponsored Products	Single products in search results and on product pages	CPC, no minimum. Professional sellers and vendors, on products eligible for the Featured Offer.
Sponsored Brands	Video, image or collection ads at the top of search and on product pages, linking to your Store or a product	CPC or vCPM. Sellers need Brand Registry.
Display ads (formerly Sponsored Display)	Audiences on Amazon, Twitch, IMDb and third-party sites	Self-serve CPC or vCPM, no minimum
DVA+ (where Amazon DSP's tools now live)	Display, online video and streaming TV, with audio due in Q4 2026. Open to brands that don't sell on Amazon.	Closed beta in the US. Self-serve, or managed service typically from $50,000, varying by country

Launch with Sponsored Products on hero products and add Sponsored Brands once you have a Store. Leave display ads and DVA+ until search campaigns make money.

ACoS, TACoS and contribution margin

Amazon's ACoS guide defines ACoS as ad spend divided by ad revenue, the inverse of ROAS, and says it needs to be lower than your profit margin. TACoS, total advertising cost of sales, is an industry metric: ad spend divided by all sales of the advertised products, organic included. It links straight to margin.

Contribution after ads (% of sales) = contribution before ads (%) minus TACoS

Back to the serum. One month it sells $50,000 on Amazon, $20,000 attributed to ads that cost $6,000. ACoS is 30%, under the 40% breakeven. TACoS is 12%, so the channel keeps 28%, or $14,000. Next month spend rises to $9,000 and attributed sales to $30,000, but total sales stay at $50,000. ACoS still reads 30%, yet TACoS is 18% and contribution falls to $11,000. The ads claimed $10,000 of sales that used to arrive organically, often on branded searches.

Our guide to ROAS, MER and POAS covers contribution margin and incrementality tests.

What Alexa for Shopping and Rufus do now

Amazon launched Rufus in February 2024 and says it helped over 300 million customers in 2025. On 13 May 2026 Amazon combined it with Alexa+ as Alexa for Shopping for US customers, and its original Rufus announcement now notes the rename.

Amazon's feature guide lists shopping guides that compare features, price and reviews, side-by-side comparisons, price history, auto-buy at a target price, recurring shopping tasks and photo search.

In the UK and Europe the name hasn't changed. Amazon's UK Prime Day announcement in June 2026 and its European Prime Big Deal Days announcement in September 2026 both call it Rufus.

Where its answers come from

Amazon says Rufus was trained on its product catalog, customer reviews, community Q&As and information from across the web. Trishul Chilimbi, an Amazon vice president, wrote that at answer time it retrieves from the catalog, customer reviews and community Q&A, and calls Amazon's store APIs. Alexa for Shopping adds the shopper's history and past conversations. In 2023 Amazon also began summarizing recurring themes in verified-purchase reviews into a short paragraph on product pages.

Ads inside the assistant

In the US, Amazon Ads says existing sponsored ads campaigns are automatically eligible to serve in Alexa for Shopping, with no extra setup. Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands prompts became generally available in the US on 25 March 2026. These AI-powered prompts appear in shopping results and on product pages, open a conversation with the assistant or answer on the page, and bill as CPC. They draw on your detail pages, Brand Store and campaign data, and you can pause any prompt and see prompt-level reports.

Sponsored Products first appeared in Alexa+ shopping conversations on Echo Show in the US in August 2025. At unBoxed, Amazon announced Branded Conversations, which add brand-provided expertise to the Alexa for Shopping conversation. They will launch in the US in January 2027, marked Sponsored, and Amazon gave no pricing. I couldn't find Amazon documentation of ads inside Rufus outside the US.

What to fix on detail pages, for shoppers and assistants

Fill every attribute your category offers, such as size, material, ingredients, compatibility and pack count. Comparisons line products up by feature, and an empty field gives the assistant nothing to compare.
Rewrite bullets around real questions: who it's for, how to use it, what's in the box, and how it differs from the obvious alternative. Take the questions from reviews, customer questions and your support inbox.
Where your page shows customer questions, answer them as the brand, then move common answers into bullets and A+ Content.
If a review complaint repeats, such as sizing or packaging, fix the product or set expectations on the page. Repeated themes are what get summarized.
Use images that carry facts: scale, contents and label text. Shoppers can search with a photo.
Build A+ Content and a Brand Store. Prompts draw on your detail pages and Brand Store.
Match names, specs, claims and prices to your own site and feeds, since the assistant compares Amazon with the web. Our product feeds guide and GEO for ecommerce cover the off-Amazon side.

Measuring the halo between your site and Amazon

Your Meta and Google ads can send shoppers to Amazon even when you don't link there. Two Amazon tools cover the traffic you do send.

Amazon Attribution is free for sellers in Brand Registry, vendors and agencies in 18 marketplaces, including the US, UK, the main EU stores, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Tag links that point to Amazon and you get detail page views, add to carts, purchases, sales and new-to-brand purchases on a 14-day, last-touch model.

The Brand Referral Bonus pays you for that traffic. Amazon's Attribution guide describes it for US seller brand owners: a bonus averaging 10% of product sales driven by non-Amazon marketing, including other products from your brand bought within 14 days of the click, paid about two months later. Brand Registry still lists it, so confirm your rate in Seller Central. On the serum, $5,000 of tagged sales at that average returns about $500, two-thirds of the $750 extra those 125 orders cost on Amazon.

Both see only tagged clicks, not the shopper who watches your video ad and then searches Amazon for your brand. For that:

Watch Brand Analytics' Search Query Performance report, which shows the searches that lead to your brand, against off-Amazon spend.
Run geo holdouts on Meta or Google and compare site plus Amazon orders by region. Amazon's All Orders report includes ship-to city, state and postal code.
Report blended MER and contribution after ads for site and Amazon together, as the ROAS guide describes.

Launch, scale or hold: a decision table

If	Do this	Why
Resellers already sell your products	Enroll in Brand Registry, then decide	Enrolling is free and adds infringement reporting
Fees leave too little to fund ads	Skip that SKU or sell a bundle	Fulfillment fees shrink as a share of a bigger order
Subscriptions drive lifetime value	Keep subscriptions on site, list single units	Amazon buyers stay Amazon's
TACoS rising, total sales flat	Reset: split branded spend, fix pages, retest	Ads are claiming organic sales
You won't sell on Amazon (US)	Check Shop Direct, then send a feed or opt out	Your products may already appear

A 60-day launch or reset plan

If you're already on Amazon, treat it as a reset and start with your search term reports and TACoS by product.

Days 1 to 5: build a per-SKU margin sheet with price, cost of goods, referral fee, FBA fees from Amazon's Revenue Calculator and a returns allowance. Write down breakeven ACoS and drop SKUs that can't fund ads.
Days 1 to 10: enroll in Brand Registry (a pending trademark counts) and the Brand Referral Bonus if eligible, and check who holds the Featured Offer on each listing.
Days 5 to 20: rebuild detail pages with the list above, set one base price across site and Amazon, and add Amazon Attribution tags to every off-Amazon link that points to Amazon.
Days 15 to 30: launch Sponsored Products, with an automatic campaign for discovery, exact match for branded and top category terms, and product targeting on your own listings. Set bids from breakeven ACoS.
Days 25 to 40: add Sponsored Brands with video and a Store link. In the US, read prompt reports and pause prompts that misdescribe the product.
Days 30 to 45: move converting search terms into exact campaigns, add negatives, and report branded and non-branded spend separately.
Days 40 to 55: pause branded Sponsored Products for two weeks and watch total sales of those products, not attributed sales.
Day 60: review contribution after ads for site and Amazon together, then scale, hold or pull back, with an owner and a date for each decision.

If you want help

Our growth audit costs $1,000 and takes two to three weeks. It reviews your ad accounts, tracking and landing pages against margin, sets breakeven and target numbers for each channel, and ends with a prioritized plan, so you know what Amazon has to earn before you commit. It's part of Growth Marketing, and you can book a 30-minute call to start.

Sources

Facts checked on 4 October 2026.