Overview

Amazon has begun embedding advertising directly inside Rufus, its AI‑driven shopping assistant. The new Sponsored Prompts format surfaces product suggestions as part of the conversational flow, giving sellers a fresh avenue to reach shoppers who prefer asking natural‑language questions over typing keyword queries. The feature is currently in a free beta and automatically includes any advertiser with an active Sponsored Products or Sponsored Brands campaign.

Key Points

• Ad placement inside chat — Recommendations appear as clickable questions within Rufus dialogs, followed by AI‑crafted answers and an add‑to‑cart button.
• Two prompt styles — Sponsored Products prompts highlight a single SKU, while Sponsored Brands prompts showcase a collection of items or direct shoppers to a brand storefront.
• Zero manual creative work — Amazon builds each prompt from the product’s detail page, customer reviews, existing campaign keywords, and catalog data.
• Automatic enrollment — All advertisers with live campaigns are opted in by default; individual prompts or the entire feature can be turned off in the console.
• Beta at no extra cost — Sellers only pay the budget already allocated to their Sponsored Products or Brands campaigns; pricing after the trial has not been disclosed.
• Dedicated reporting tab — A new section in the advertising dashboard records impressions, clicks, and orders that originate from Sponsored Prompts.

How Sponsored Prompts Works

1. Conversation monitoring — When a buyer types a question to Rufus, the system scans the text for intent that matches any product in the advertiser’s active campaigns.
   Example: A shopper writes, “What’s the best blender for smoothies on a budget?” Rufus flags the query as relevant to kitchen appliances.

2. Prompt generation — Amazon’s AI selects a product from the matching campaign, pulls key phrases from its title, bullet points, and top reviews, and formulates a clickable question that fits naturally into the chat. The AI creates the prompt, “How does this blender keep smoothies smooth without breaking the bank?”