Product Collection Ads Are Retiring: How to Move to Collections

Sponsored Brands Collections is replacing the old Product Collection ad format, with two modes: Manual, where you pick 3 to 10 ASINs, and Automatic, where Amazon’s AI picks them. According to trade coverage, new Product Collection campaigns have converted to Manual Collections since September 2026, and the old format shuts off entirely in January 2027.

Your existing campaigns keep running until then, so nothing breaks overnight. But the creative you built those ads around (custom headlines and lifestyle images) mostly goes away, and that changes how you should plan the next few months.

What is changing, and when?

The format did not arrive all at once, and the sources give slightly different starting dates. Here is what we could confirm:

One caveat. Amazon’s own launch page, as we read it in early October 2026, does not mention a deprecation date. The September and January dates come from trade coverage. We think they are reliable, but check the notices in your Ads console before you plan around an exact day.

Amazon lists the new format as available to sellers, vendors and agencies in the US, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, much of Europe including the UK and Germany, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Australia and Japan, through the console and the Ads API.

How is Collections different from Product Collection?

The short version: more products, less custom creative.

Each Collections ad shows product details such as price, ratings and deals, according to Amazon. EcomCrew reports custom images can still be submitted but will not appear in the ad.

That last point matters more than it looks. For years, the Sponsored Brands headline and lifestyle image were the main way a brand could stand out at the top of search. In Collections, the products, their prices and their review counts do that job. Weak main images and thin reviews become harder to hide.

Should you let Amazon pick the ASINs?

Amazon’s case for Automatic mode is a beta result it shared at unBoxed Toronto: AI-curated collections drove 2.5x more unique products purchased than manually curated ones in November to December 2025 (Amazon Ads). That is Amazon’s own test, and “unique products purchased” is a measure of breadth, not profit. It does not tell you whether those extra products were the ones you wanted to sell.

Our rule of thumb:

Use Manual when:
– Margins vary a lot across your catalog and you only want to promote the profitable ones.
– You are launching or pushing specific ASINs and need the budget to go there.
– You sell variations or bundles where the wrong combination would confuse shoppers.
– You have a few strong sellers and a long tail you do not want on display.

Test Automatic when:
– You have a broad catalog of similar-margin products, such as apparel or home goods in many styles.
– You do not know which product combinations shoppers prefer and want Amazon to find out.
– You can exclude the ASINs you never want shown, such as low-stock, low-margin or poorly reviewed items.

Either way, run them side by side before January 2027 rather than switching everything on one day.

Your migration checklist

1. List every live Sponsored Brands campaign using Product Collection. Note spend, ACoS and the ASINs in each one for the last 90 days.
2. Check ASIN counts. Collections needs at least three products. PPC Land reports campaigns with fewer than three ASINs keep limited, optimization-only access and cannot add new ad groups.
3. Pick 3 to 10 products per collection. Group them by shopper intent, such as one product type in several sizes, not just whatever is in stock.
4. Fix the main images and titles on those ASINs. They are now the creative. Our listing images work starts here for exactly this reason.
5. Decide Manual or Automatic per campaign using the rules above. Set up exclusions before launching Automatic.
6. Download the updated bulk templates if you build campaigns in bulk. EcomCrew reports they changed for the new format.
7. Run old and new in parallel for at least four weeks. Compare cost per order and new-to-brand sales, not just click-through rate.
8. Move budget, then pause the legacy campaign. Keep its history; reporting remains available.
9. API users: confirm your tools support the new endpoints before January 2027.

What happens to existing campaigns and their data?

Existing Product Collection campaigns keep serving impressions and can still be managed until the January 2027 shutoff, according to EcomCrew. You do not need to rebuild everything this week. What you cannot do is create new Product Collection ads: since September 2026, new ones convert to Manual Collections automatically.

Historical Product Collection reporting remains available, so you will still be able to compare old and new performance after the switch. Download the last 12 months anyway. Reports are easier to analyze in your own spreadsheet than in the console, and having a clean baseline from before the change is the only way to tell whether the new format is doing better or worse for your account.

Where does the creative go now?

If the headline and lifestyle image are gone from this format, brand storytelling moves to other places. In practice that means video. Sponsored Products now supports feature videos, which we cover in our Sponsored Products video guide, and Sponsored Brands video still exists. Amazon’s free Creative Agent can draft video and display creative for Sponsored Brands. Your Brand Store and A+ Content still carry the long-form story.

What we'd do this week

• Export your Sponsored Brands campaigns and tag every Product Collection one.
• For the top five by spend, build a Manual Collection with the same ASINs plus any strong sellers that were previously left out.
• Pick one broad-catalog campaign and set up an Automatic Collection test with exclusions.
• Review main images and review counts on every ASIN going into a collection.
• Put a calendar reminder for early December to compare results and plan the cutover well before the January 2027 shutoff.

This is the kind of migration we run for clients as part of Amazon PPC management. If you would rather have someone check your setup first, our free account audit covers it. Dates and rules here are as of October 2026; confirm them in your Ads console.