Sponsored Brands video is dominating 2026 - and AI-made ads are why

A notable shift is playing out in Amazon advertising this year: many brands are now directing the majority of their ad spend to Sponsored Brands video ads and only a minority to Sponsored Products - a near-complete reversal of the old default. Sponsored Brands video is dominating 2026 so far.

The accelerant is AI-generated video. What used to take a production team weeks now takes days: brands can spin up dozens of video variations, split test them quickly, find the winners fast, and cut their cost per click in the process. Speed of iteration, not production polish, is the advantage.

One apparel brand rode this approach past half a million dollars a month in revenue - and the part that stands out is not just the scale but the efficiency: it grew while holding advertising cost of sale (ACoS) at 11 percent, well below what most aggressive scaling campaigns produce.

The takeaway for sellers still treating video as an afterthought: the barrier to testing video creative has collapsed. If your competitors can test twenty videos while you are storyboarding one, the math on ad performance starts to move against you regardless of how well your keywords are managed.