Each year, Amazon Ads unBoxed brings together the advertising world to spotlight the next wave of retail media opportunities. This year, held November 10-12 in Nashville, the event featured some major announcements, educational breakout sessions, and product-deep dives that showcased how brands can better engage shoppers across the purchase journey.
In this blog, we’ll take a closer look at several new ad formats highlighted at unBoxed and how retailers are already bringing them to life with Kevel.
Sponsored Products Video was the standout announcement at Amazon Ads unBoxed, earning one of the strongest reactions of the day. It’s rare for a creative format to generate that kind of energy in a room — but it makes sense. Putting video directly inside search results feels like the natural next step in how shoppers discover, compare, and evaluate products. It delivers context at the exact moment someone is deciding what to click.
What made this moment even more interesting for us is that several retailers using Kevel have already been running versions of this format — not just in search results, but across homepages, category pages, product detail pages, and more. They didn’t wait for Amazon’s roadmap to validate the idea. They worked with Kevel to build the experience they knew would drive results.
This trend has been so clear that we added Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Brands Video as creative examples in our documentation months ago — long before the UnBoxed announcement — because customers were already asking how to build them.
Amazon’s Sponsored Products Video rollout essentially formalizes what these retailers have already proven: short, product-led videos lift performance. The data Amazon shared — higher CTRs compared to static images — directly aligns with what we’ve seen across Kevel-powered placements (and we’re also seeing retailers command substantially higher CPMs).
The flexibility has unlocked real experimentation. Retailers on Kevel are rotating multiple video variants per SKU, pairing video with product-level and keyword targeting, and optimizing based on user engagement signals like view-through rates and detail-page visits. When we show these formats to other retailers, the reaction is almost always immediate: We want this. How fast can we launch it?
With Kevel, the answer is usually: as fast as you’re ready.
The best part of Sponsored Products Video isn’t just the format itself — it’s how straightforward it is to build with Kevel. Because Kevel gives retailers full control over placements, creative types, targeting, and reporting, you can launch video-based Sponsored Products or Sponsored Brands units quickly, without waiting for another platform to dictate the rules.
Here’s how retailers are doing it today:
Everything starts with the creative template. Retailers define a custom video format in Kevel that supports one or more video assets, brand and product metadata, CTAs, and any rules they want around fallbacks or product selection. Some mirror Amazon’s Sponsored Products Video experience; others build a richer Sponsored Brands–style layout with a headline, video slot, and featured SKUs.
Kevel can provide a ready-to-use starting template, or you can build a fully custom experience using Kevel Studio, giving you complete control over layout, fields, and behavior.
The power of these formats comes from how deeply they tie into retail data. Retailers use Kevel Catalog to link videos to the exact SKUs, brands, attributes, and categories that matter. This is what enables a hair-care brand to show different videos for curly vs. straight hair products, or a tools manufacturer to promote distinct videos on drill-related queries — all driven by structured product data rather than manual creative mapping.
Using Catalog also unlocks clean, SKU-level attribution. Because campaigns connect directly to items in your product feed, retailers can automatically capture downstream signals like product detail page visits, add-to-carts, orders, and ROAS. These performance insights are what make advertisers eager to invest again and again.
Once the format and product connections are in place, retailers decide where the unit should appear. With Kevel, that can be almost anywhere: search results, homepages, category modules, product detail pages, or app placements.
Preparing the ad tends to be light work — a bit of front-end tuning to ensure the video fits seamlessly into the existing UI — and then Kevel handles the serving and targeting.
Retailers can use a single adaptive template across all surfaces or create targeted variations. Either way, the result is consistent: one video unit that renders cleanly across desktop and mobile, with layout flexibility but a single underlying format. This lets teams scale the placement quickly across the full shopping journey without duplicating effort.
With the placement and template set, retailers layer in the rules that determine how the unit behaves. This includes everything from rotating multiple video variants for a single product, to prioritizing specific brands or campaign tiers.
Targeting is a key part of this. Advertisers can target by product, category, keyword, brand, audience, or any custom attribute they choose to expose. Many retailers use Kevel Console to give advertisers a self-serve workflow to set up campaigns, configure targeting, upload creative, and manage budgets. Kevel handles all decisioning behind the scenes, allowing retailers to design exactly how much control advertisers should have.
Most teams treat this stage as ongoing optimization rather than a one-time setup. They test different storytelling styles, adjust bids and budgets based on engagement, and refine when and where each video appears. Because Kevel gives them full control, the format can be tuned to what works best for their audiences — not what fits a one-size-fits-all platform.
Once the format is live, retailers choose how to measure success. Some prioritize CTR and view-through rate; others care more about product detail page visits, add-to-carts, purchases or conversions, and ROAS. Kevel supports all of these metrics, and because the data can flow directly into the retailer’s own environment, teams can analyze performance in the way that best fits their business — not someone else’s reporting model.
This flexibility is partly why the format resonates so strongly with brands. Advertisers get clear, SKU-level insight tied directly to the videos they ran. Retailers can feed this data into BI tools, compare video to static formats, and package performance in ways that drive repeat investment. When brands see a format delivering real lift, they reinvest — and pay premium CPMs to stay visible.
It is measurement that works for the retailer and the advertiser, not some formula set by another platform.
Amazon’s Sponsored Products Video confirms what many retailers already knew: richer formats win. But with Kevel, you don’t need to wait for Amazon — or anyone else — to release them. You can build the exact experience your shoppers need, across every surface of your site, on your own timeline.
And you’re not doing that alone. Kevel’s Solutions Architecture and Customer Success teams help retailers design templates, integrate catalog data, configure placements, and launch campaigns quickly. For retailers seeking deeper partnership, our Strategy & Services group goes even further — supporting commercialization, packaging, ad operations, reporting, brand strategy, and cross-team rollout planning. It’s end-to-end support for retailers who want to scale these formats with confidence.
Retailers using Kevel move faster and deliver formats that brands are willing to pay a premium for. That’s how you stay ahead of the market. That’s how you build what’s next.
If you’re a Kevel customer and want to add Sponsored Brands or Sponsored Brands Video, reach out to your Customer Success Manager or Solutions Architect — they’ll help you get started.
If you are not yet a Kevel customer but want the freedom to build formats like this, get in touch today. We would love to help you create what comes next.
