Retail media is steadily moving beyond the search bar and onto the biggest screen in the home. At IAB NewFronts 2026 in New York, Amazon Ads and Samsung Ads announced a partnership that brings remote-enabled interactive, shoppable ad formats to Samsung TV Plus, launching in July 2026. Samsung TV Plus becomes the first external connected TV platform to offer Amazon's Interactive Video Ad technology through the Amazon DSP.

Courtney Howell, head of agency development at Samsung Ads, described it plainly: "Shoppable innovation is no longer a future concept, it's the standard."

What the technology does

The partnership introduces three interactive ad formats that viewers can engage with directly from their TV remote, without switching devices or breaking the viewing experience.

For brands that sell on Amazon, Add to Cart functionality allows a viewer to add a product directly to their Amazon basket with a single click of the remote. The purchase journey that previously required leaving the sofa, picking up a phone and navigating to a product page is compressed into one action from the biggest screen in the home.

For advertisers that do not sell on Amazon, two alternative formats extend the engagement beyond the TV screen: Send to Phone delivers product information or a call to action directly to a viewer's mobile device, while Sign Up Today captures lead intent in the moment.

All three formats are accessible through Amazon DSP, using the same buying infrastructure advertisers already use for Prime Video and other programmatic placements. 

Kelly MacLean, VP of Engineering, Science and Product for Amazon DSP, noted that Amazon's shoppable ad formats are built to drive measurable performance both on and off Amazon, through its combination of broad reach and authenticated audience signals.

Why this matters beyond the format itself

The significance of this announcement is not simply the addition of a new ad format to a streaming platform. It reflects how quickly the structural boundary between media and commerce is dissolving.

Television advertising has historically been evaluated on reach and brand metrics. The measurement chain from a TV exposure to a commercial outcome has always involved inference, modelling and assumption. Interactive shoppable formats change that fundamentally. When a viewer adds a product to their basket while watching a show, the connection between the media exposure and the transaction is direct, timestamped and attributable.

Channels that were once classified as purely upper-funnel are becoming measurable and action-driven. That changes how they are planned, how they are justified in budget conversations, and how they are optimised over time.

The announcement also illustrates something we have been tracking closely: Amazon is extending its commerce infrastructure well beyond its own properties. Samsung TV Plus sits outside the Amazon ecosystem, yet through Amazon DSP, it now carries Amazon's shoppable technology. The same pattern is visible across the DSP's growing inventory portfolio, which now spans Netflix, Spotify, DAZN and other platforms alongside Samsung TV Plus.

The rollout and what to expect

The launch is scheduled for July 2026, initially in the US. Amazon has not confirmed specific international markets at this stage. As with most Amazon Ads innovations, a US launch typically signals where the platform is heading more broadly, with UK and European availability following as the technology scales.

What this means for brands

For brands already using Amazon DSP, Samsung TV Plus inventory becomes an extension of the same full-funnel strategy, accessible through the same platform, measured against the same commercial outcomes. The combination of Amazon's authenticated audience data with Samsung TV Plus's free ad-supported streaming audience creates a targeting and measurement environment that conventional broadcast TV cannot match.

For brands considering how to make CTV investment more accountable, this announcement demonstrates that the accountability gap between streaming and performance channels is closing faster than most planning frameworks currently assume.

The same ecosystem that has historically captured demand at the point of purchase is now playing a much bigger role in shaping it across multiple touchpoints. For brands building full-funnel strategies on retail data and real shopper behaviour, that is where the next phase of growth sits.

Want to understand how shoppable CTV fits into your Amazon advertising strategy? Talk to the Vector Retail Media team.

"Channels that were once classified as purely upper-funnel are becoming measurable and action-driven. That changes how they are planned, how they are justified in budget conversations, and how they are optimised over time."