A conversation with Amazon Ads at Cannes Lions 2026: Why retail media should always inform the creative brief

For decades, the commerce industry has relied on expensive, subjective creative panels to evaluate campaigns. Today, brands can bypass opinions and rely entirely on actual purchase data to prove what drives sales. Flywheel's, Mike Feldman sat down with Amazon Ads’ Jen Donahue at the Amazon Ads Port during Cannes Lions to explore how retail media is changing the creative testing process. Retail media gives brands a way to test different hooks, claims and product benefits against consumer action, creating faster feedback loops than traditional research methods alone. Those signals can help teams understand which messages resonate, then apply that learning to broader creative and media decisions. Mike and Jen also discuss how Amazon Marketing Cloud can connect upper-funnel activity to downstream search and conversion behavior, and how Amazon Ads is helping national, regional and local advertisers adapt creative for specific markets. Watch the full conversation for a closer look at how creative, commerce data and measurement can work together to improve marketing decisions.