Amazon Built a $60 Billion Ad Business Using Adtech Firms and Agencies. Now Some Say They’re Getting Squeezed Out
Meta description: Amazon’s $60B ads machine was fueled by adtech and agencies. As new tools roll out, partners fear the retail media giant is cutting them out of the loop.
Amazon’s retail media engine has become a roughly $60 billion ad juggernaut, outgrowing every other major digital player in percentage terms and reshaping how brands reach shoppers at the point of sale. Now, after years of leaning on adtech specialists and agencies to build and manage that growth, some of those same partners say they’re being written out of the next chapter.
For out‑of‑home and omnichannel buyers, the shift is more than inside‑baseball platform drama. It signals how the world’s most powerful retailer–publisher wants to control demand, data and creative across every screen, from connected TV to digital place-based and, eventually, physical retail media networks.
Amazon’s ascent in ads has been well‑documented. WARC Media forecasts its retail media ad revenues will exceed $60 billion in 2025, with a clear runway toward $70 billion in 2026. Ads is now one of Amazon’s fastest‑growing lines, with quarterly ad revenue of $17.7 billion in Q3 2025, up 22% year over year, buoyed by a “full‑funnel DSP strategy” and new inventory via partners like Netflix and Spotify. That scale was not built alone.
For much of the past decade, Amazon’s ad business relied on a layer of retail‑focused adtech firms and specialist agencies to do the heavy lifting: stitching together product feeds, bidding strategies, and measurement for brands still figuring out sponsored products and retail DSP. In 2021 it formalized those relationships with the Amazon Ad Partner Network, a program designed to connect advertisers with approved tech and service providers fluent in its ecosystem.
Those partners developed tools on top of Amazon’s APIs, evangelized the platform to global brands, and often acted as translators between performance‑obsessed Amazon teams and traditional marketers. In effect, they were Amazon’s extended sales force and R&D shop—without a line item on Amazon’s P&L.
Now, following a wave of product launches and platform changes, some of those same firms say the balance of power is shifting. According to multiple adtech and agency sources cited by Adweek, Amazon is “pulling away from third parties” and working more directly with advertisers, increasingly bringing services and capabilities in‑house.
The signals aren’t subtle. Amazon has steadily expanded native tools that overlap with partners’ core offerings—richer self‑serve buying interfaces, AI‑driven optimization, expanded reporting, and automation features that reduce the perceived need for external platforms or managed‑service agencies. At the same time, the company is deepening direct strategic relationships with the biggest holding companies and top‑spending brands, tightening its grip on large budgets.
Layered on top is Amazon’s broader AI and data strategy. Across the company, management has emphasized “AI‑driven discovery” and “expanded media inventory” as key to its retail and advertising flywheel. In retail, its Rufus AI shopping assistant already serves hundreds of millions of customers and materially lifts conversion—an example of how Amazon can use first‑party signals at a scale no partner can replicate. Bringing more planning and optimization inside its walls only amplifies that data advantage.
For adtech firms built around Amazon APIs, this is existential. Several report shrinking margins as Amazon introduces native features that mimic their differentiators, and as brands are nudged toward direct engagement with Amazon Ads teams. Agencies, meanwhile, face a familiar platform tension: they want deeper tools and access, but every improvement that makes Amazon easier to self‑serve eroding the case for their own fees.
The consequences for the OOH and broader omnichannel world are nuanced.
On one hand, Amazon’s consolidation of capabilities could make it easier for brands to orchestrate campaigns that span Amazon’s retail media, streaming, audio and—through partners—DOOH inventory, from a single console. As its DSP strategy matures and third‑party inventory grows, OOH players integrated into that stack could see new demand and richer shopper data signals flowing into planning.
On the other hand, if Amazon increasingly demands that brands transact and measure within its own walled garden, intermediaries that have connected retail data to external channels may find themselves squeezed. Measurement vendors that tie in‑store, online and OOH exposure together could lose access or be relegated to the margins if Amazon prioritizes its proprietary attribution.
For brands, the trade‑off is control versus convenience. Direct relationships with Amazon promise more influence over roadmaps, cleaner access to first‑party insights, and faster activation across Amazon‑owned media. But over‑reliance on a single platform’s tools risks locking planning, optimization and even creative into that environment, making it harder to build truly channel‑agnostic strategies that treat Amazon as one touchpoint among many—including OOH.
Industry insiders say the writing on the wall is similar to what they’ve seen with other giants: platforms enlist partners to accelerate adoption, then gradually internalize the most valuable functions once the market is hooked. In Amazon’s case, the stakes are higher because the company controls not just media, but the full shopping experience—from discovery to transaction to delivery.
For OOH specialists, the implications are clear. As retail media networks proliferate and Amazon’s $60 billion ads machine keeps expanding, the battle will be over who owns the shopper graph that informs everything from digital panels near stores to interactive experiences at the point of sale. If Amazon succeeds in centralizing that intelligence, OOH players may find themselves negotiating not just for ad dollars, but for a seat at the data table.
Whether partners are being strategically sidelined or simply pushed to evolve, the message from Amazon’s latest moves is unmistakable: the era of easy, intermediary‑led growth in its ad ecosystem is ending. Those that want to keep pace with the retail media giant will have to prove they add value Amazon cannot, on screens Amazon does not fully control—including the streets, transit hubs and retail environments where OOH still owns the last look.