Amazon Review Requests Ads: How They Work and When to Use Them

What is Amazon Ads Review Requests?

Review Requests is a paid Amazon Ads campaign type that shows a review invitation to shoppers who recently bought your product, while they browse busy Amazon pages such as the homepage. The buyer can leave a star rating with one tap and optionally add written text, photos or video. It is aimed at products still below 1,000 ratings and reviews in total.

The difference from everything sellers had before is who sees the ask and where. Amazon's free tools send an email. Review Requests puts a native, Sponsored-labeled module in front of a verified buyer during a later shopping visit, which is when many people actually have a minute to tap a star.

Amazon's own description of the flow, from the Review Requests launch announcement, has three steps:

1. Someone who bought your product recently is shown the Sponsored invitation while shopping.
2. One tap on a star records their rating.
3. If they want, they go on to write a review and attach photos or a video.

The ad does not buy a review and does not influence what the buyer says. You pay to place the invitation; the buyer decides whether to respond and how. That distinction is what keeps it inside Amazon's rules, and it is also why results vary so much by product.

What did Amazon announce, and when does Review Requests launch?

Amazon Ads announced Review Requests at unBoxed on September 29, 2026, alongside Branded Conversations. Its launch announcement says the US open beta starts in late October 2026, while the companion news article says it launches in November 2026. Plan for a late October to November start in the US only.

The two dates are both on Amazon's own pages. The technical "what's new" entry says open beta in late October; the unBoxed recap at advertising.amazon.com says November 2026. The likeliest reading is a phased opening, with some accounts seeing it in late October and wider access in November, but Amazon has not said that. If you do not see it in Amazon Ads Agent yet, ask your Amazon Ads account team.

Campaigns are built in Amazon Ads Agent, Amazon's AI campaign tool, using the bid and budget settings you already know from other campaign types. Teams that manage ads by software can use the Amazon Ads Unified API, where Amazon says the new campaigns are built on the current Unified Campaign Management endpoints, so no separate integration is needed.

Who can use Review Requests, and who cannot?

Registered sellers and vendors in the US can use it if their advertising account is in good standing with no active policy violations. A product qualifies only while its combined count of ratings and reviews stays under 1,000. Amazon checks eligibility at setup and while the campaign runs, and pauses the requests once that count hits 1,000.

• Marketplace: US only at launch. UK and India sellers cannot run it yet, and Amazon has given no date for other marketplaces.
• Account: sellers and vendors both qualify. An open policy violation on the account blocks access, so clear account health issues first.
• Product: under 1,000 ratings and reviews counted together. PPC Land pointed out that Amazon's wording switches between "total ratings and reviews" and "1,000 reviews"; the sensible reading is one combined count.
• Brand Registry: Amazon's announcement does not list Brand Registry as a requirement. That is unusual for a brand-building ad type, so confirm in the console before you plan around it.

Who it is not for: mature best sellers above the threshold, products with live review or policy problems, and anything you would not be happy to have more honest ratings on. If a product has a known defect, more ratings will surface it faster.

How is Review Requests billed?

Amazon has not published a pricing model. Its pages say only that campaigns run on the bid and budget settings used elsewhere in Amazon Ads. One secondary report says it is billed per click into the review flow; another says the model is undisclosed. Until Amazon confirms, budget as if every outcome is uncertain.

The same UNITIX report, again via My Amazon Guy, says the prompt appears at least 7 days after delivery, uses the product's catalog image, reports rating-only and written reviews as separate counts, and that the resulting reviews carry no ad label. None of this appears on Amazon's own pages, so treat it as a preview to check against what you see in the console.

Should you trust Amazon's claim of three times more reviews?

Treat it as a sign the format works, not a benchmark. Amazon says products in testing collected roughly triple their usual weekly ratings and reviews, but the data comes from a 19-day US closed beta in June 2026, compares each product with its own earlier pace, and discloses no sample size, categories, spend or baseline.

Here is why the number cannot be used to forecast your results:

• Short window. June 3 to 21 is under three weeks. Weekly averages built on two or three weeks are noisy.
• No control group. Comparing a product with its own earlier weeks cannot tell you whether the lift came from the ad or from a sales spike, a price change or seasonality.
• Unknown baseline. A jump from 3 to 9 weekly reviews is a very different business case from a jump from 40 to 120, and Amazon does not say which kind of products were tested.
• Unknown cost. Without spend, there is no cost per review, which is the only number that tells you whether it was worth paying for.
• Unknown rating mix. More ratings is good only if the average holds. Amazon did not say whether the star distribution changed.

The fair conclusion: Review Requests likely raises review velocity for new products with low organic review rates. How much, and at what cost, you will only learn from your own test.

How does Review Requests fit with Vine, Request a Review and Amazon's review policy?

It adds a paid layer on top of the free tools rather than replacing them. Vine still gets a brand-new product its first honest reviews, Request a Review still asks every buyer once by email, and Review Requests reaches the same verified buyers later on Amazon's own pages. Amazon's ban on incentivized or selective review asks still applies in full.

On policy, nothing changed. Amazon's announcement calls these the "same authentic reviews customers already leave". You still cannot offer refunds, discounts, gifts or anything else for a review, ask only happy customers, or ask for a positive review. In the US, the FTC also finalized a rule in August 2024 against buying positive or negative reviews. Paying Amazon to show a neutral invitation is not the same act as paying a reviewer, but if you have questions about your own review practices, confirm them with your legal adviser.

The practical way to combine them for a new product is set out in our how-to on running Amazon ads to get reviews, and the Vine side is covered in is Amazon Vine worth it.

Which ASINs should you run Review Requests on?

Start with products that already sell steadily, have a healthy rating, and sit well under 1,000 ratings: new launches past their Vine stage, strong products stuck at a low review count, and child variations that lost shared reviews in 2026. Skip products with known quality problems or too few recent orders to reach.

A simple way to rank candidates:

• Recent order volume. The ad can only reach recent buyers. A product with ten orders a month has very few people to invite.
• Current rating of 4.0 or higher. If buyers are mostly happy, more ratings usually hold or lift the average. If not, fix the product first.
• Low review count relative to competitors. The bigger the gap against the top three products for your main keyword, the more a faster review pace is worth in conversion.
• Variations that now stand alone. PPC Land reported that Amazon began restricting review sharing between variations in 2026, rolling out category by category between February 12 and May 31, 2026. Child listings that lost inherited reviews are natural candidates.
• Good margin. You are paying to speed up something that would partly happen anyway. Low-margin products have less room for that.

How should you set up your first Review Requests test? Step by step

Pick two or three eligible ASINs, record their review pace for the previous four weeks, keep Request a Review running on every order, launch with a small daily budget in Amazon Ads Agent, run for at least four weeks, then compare the change in weekly ratings and reviews with your spend.

1. Check account health. Resolve any open policy violation, since that blocks eligibility.
2. Choose two or three test ASINs using the criteria above, and one similar control ASIN that you leave without Review Requests.
3. Record the baseline. For each ASIN, note weekly orders, new ratings, new written reviews and average star rating for the last four weeks. Use the same source each time.
4. Keep the free tools on. Continue sending Request a Review on every eligible order, so you measure what the ad adds on top, not instead.
5. Create the campaign in Amazon Ads Agent with a modest daily budget and a bid you are comfortable losing on a test. Do not copy a default bid without checking it against your margin.
6. Change nothing else on the test ASINs for the test period: no price cuts, coupons or major listing edits, because they would blur the result.
7. Run for at least four weeks. Review volume is lumpy, and the ad reaches buyers some days after delivery, so early weeks undercount.
8. Calculate cost per incremental review as shown in the next section, and compare it against what a review is worth to you in conversion.
9. Scale, adjust or stop. Add ASINs that pass your threshold; lower bids on those close to it; stop on those where the rating average falls.

If you run ads through an agency, ask them to show the baseline and control numbers, not only campaign spend. Our Amazon PPC team reports review tests this way.

How do you measure whether Review Requests paid off?

Measure cost per incremental review: total spend divided by the extra ratings and reviews gained above your baseline and above the control product's change. Then compare that cost with the conversion gain a higher review count brings. Amazon's campaign metrics alone cannot tell you how many reviews would have come anyway.

A worked example with made-up round numbers, purely to show the method: a product averaged 5 new ratings a week before the test. During four weeks of Review Requests it averaged 11, while a similar control product's pace did not change. That is 6 extra ratings a week, or 24 over the test. If you spent $360, your cost per incremental rating is $15.

Whether $15 is good depends on the product. Ask what the extra ratings do to conversion rate on all your traffic, including organic and other ads, because reviews sit on the detail page permanently. Track these for each test ASIN:

• Weekly new ratings and new written reviews, separately
• Average star rating before, during and after
• Unit session percentage on the detail page
• Sponsored Products conversion rate and ACOS on the same ASIN
• Total Review Requests spend

For wider review planning beyond this one tool, see our Amazon review strategy guide.

What mistakes should you avoid, and what is the pre-launch checklist?

The main mistakes are pairing Review Requests with any incentive, using it to replace the free tools, testing on weak products, reading Amazon's 3x figure as a forecast, and judging cost per click instead of cost per review. Check the list below before your first campaign goes live.

Mistakes and risks

• Adding incentives elsewhere. Inserts, emails or social posts that offer something for a review still break Amazon's policy, whatever ad you run.
• Turning off Request a Review. It is free and reaches every order. The ad should sit on top of it.
• Stopping Vine too early. Vine is still the fastest route to the first reviews on a product with none.
• Testing on a product buyers dislike. More ratings will pull the average down faster.
• Budgeting from the demo default. A reported $0.75 default bid is not a recommendation for your category.
• Ignoring the 1,000 cap. Requests pause at the threshold; plan the next lever before a product gets there.

Pre-launch checklist

• Account in good standing with no active policy violations
• Test ASINs below the 1,000 cap, rated 4.0 or higher, with steady recent orders
• Four-week baseline recorded, plus a control ASIN
• Request a Review running on every eligible order
• No inserts, emails or offers that could be read as an incentive
• Review Requests visible in your Amazon Ads Agent account (late October or November 2026)
• Budget cap and a cost-per-review target agreed in advance

If you want a second view of which ASINs to test first, our free audit covers review gaps alongside ads.

Sources and data notes

Facts in this article were checked against the sources below on October 24, 2026. Amazon changes programs and dates often, so confirm details in Seller Central or the Amazon Ads console before you act.

• Amazon Ads: Accelerate authentic reviews with Review Requests (launch announcement)
• Amazon Ads: Introducing Branded Conversations and Review Requests
• PPC Land: Amazon to sell ads asking buyers to review products under 1,000 ratings
• My Amazon Guy: Amazon Review Requests Ads Launch in Late October
• SellerSprite: Amazon Vine Program for Sellers: 2026 Eligibility, Costs, and Workflow
• Seller Labs: How to Use Amazon's Request a Review Button Effectively

Frequently Asked Questions