Amazon began letting a small, invite-only group of U.S. customers text its Alexa for Shopping agent on November 6, 2026, and Sponsored Products ads appear inside those text threads, Digiday reported. Amazon plans to expand access to millions more customers over the coming weeks.
Customers link a phone number, accept terms, and receive a contact named Alexa Shopping. The agent searches, compares options, texts suggestions, adds chosen items to a cart, and checks out on request. An auto-buy option lets it purchase when a price reaches a customer's target. Conversations can continue across the Amazon Shopping app, the website, and Alexa-enabled devices.
Ads show up at the discovery stage, when the agent texts back a set of options and a Sponsored Product can be one of them. Purchases the agent makes on its own carry no ads. Amazon is not charging advertisers for these placements yet, and Digiday framed that as a low-cost test of how shoppers respond to ads in text conversations.
Amazon said more than 400 million customers used Alexa for Shopping in the past 12 months and that use of its agentic features has grown more than eightfold since January. The ad format follows earlier steps this year. Sponsored Products and Brands prompts arrived in March, Alexa for Shopping replaced Rufus in May, and Amazon announced Alexa+ Agentic Ads this summer, with the advertiser platform later renamed Amazon Ads Agent.
Independent ad tech consultant Jonathan D'Sousa-Rauto said new ad placements are generally treated as interesting tests, and that impression definitions, reporting, and measurement will matter in judging whether the ads improve efficiency.
Source: Digiday - https://digiday.com/media-buying/amazons-shopping-agent-now-takes-orders-by-text-with-sponsored-product-ads-in-the-replies/