Rupert Staines, Co-Founder and CEO, Vector Retail Media
Sky Media and Amazon Ads announced yesterday (6 October 2026) that Sky’s streaming inventory and audiences are now available through Amazon Ads Agent, a partnership that is significant for more than the additional premium video inventory it brings into Amazon’s advertising ecosystem.
Advertisers in the UK and Ireland can now access Sky inventory across Sky Go, NOW, Sky Glass, Sky Q and Sky Stream through Amazon Ads, spanning entertainment, drama, news and live sport.
Coming just a week after Amazon unBoxed 2026, the company’s annual advertising showcase, the timing is particularly interesting.
Many of Amazon’s announcements last week focused on bringing previously separate parts of advertising closer together, from media buying and creative to optimisation and measurement. Today’s Sky news provides a practical example of what that strategy starts to look like when applied to premium media.
It also raises a bigger question for the retail media industry: as commerce data and retail media technology move further into television, streaming and other brand environments, where does retail media end and the wider media market begin?
Retail media is moving beyond the retailer
Retail media has traditionally been strongest when consumers are already showing intent. Sponsored search and onsite advertising allow brands to reach shoppers at a point when the distance between consideration and purchase can be very short.
That remains an important part of the market, but increasingly it is only one part.
Amazon has spent the past few years expanding the reach of its advertising business across streaming, audio, publishers and off-Amazon inventory. What stood out at unBoxed this year was the emphasis on connecting those environments, rather than simply adding more inventory.
Amazon Ads Agent brings Sponsored Ads, Full-Funnel Campaigns and Display, Video and Audio into one platform, while Full-Funnel Campaigns are designed to coordinate activity across sponsored ads, display, video and streaming TV around a single objective.
The direction is towards fewer distinctions between the individual parts of the media plan and more emphasis on the audience, objective and eventual commercial outcome.
Sky adds another important piece to that picture. The point is not that Sky content has suddenly become retail media – it clearly hasn’t. What’s changing is the ability to apply the data and technology associated with retail media to environments that sit much further away from the transaction.
The opportunity starts before the search
Retail media’s proximity to purchase has always been one of its greatest strengths. Commerce signals can help advertisers understand what people browse, consider and buy, making them particularly valuable when demand already exists.
But brands cannot grow simply by becoming better at converting people who are already shopping. Demand must be created before it can be captured.
Someone watching live sport or entertainment through Sky may have no immediate intention of buying a product, but commerce and behavioural signals can help advertisers make better decisions about the audiences they want to reach before that purchase intent develops.
In that context, the value of retail media begins to shift. It becomes less about the placement itself and more about the intelligence sitting behind the media.
As automation grows, strategy becomes more important
The other major theme at unBoxed was Amazon’s increasing use of AI to simplify how campaigns are planned and managed.
Amazon Ads Agent is designed to help advertisers analyse performance, make decisions and take action through conversational AI, while Amazon is also using automation to manage audiences, formats, budgets and optimisation across the funnel.
That should make increasingly complex media activity easier to execute, but it does not remove the need for strategic judgement.
If technology can make more decisions about where budgets are allocated and which formats or audiences are performing, advertisers need to be clearer about what those systems are being asked to achieve.
What is driving incremental growth? Which audiences genuinely matter? How should brand and performance investment work together? Are we measuring genuine impact, or simply the outcomes that are easiest to attribute?
As execution becomes easier, those questions become more important.
Retail media is becoming the connective layer
The significance of today’s announcement is not simply another programmatic partnership. It demonstrates how quickly the boundaries between retail media, programmatic and traditional brand media are beginning to blur.
Amazon has spent several years adding broadcasters, publishers, retailers and technology partners to its advertising ecosystem. unBoxed suggests the focus is now shifting towards connecting those pieces more effectively.
Commerce signals, premium media, automation and measurement are increasingly sitting within the same infrastructure.
That does not mean traditional retail media is disappearing. Sponsored search and onsite advertising will remain important, particularly close to purchase. What is changing is the assumption that retail media begins and ends within the retailer environment.
Increasingly, the opportunity is to use commerce intelligence across the entire journey that happens before the purchase as well.
That’s why retail media is starting to look much bigger than retail.
