Amazon Ads is about to let you pay to ask verified buyers for a star rating or a written review. Review Requests opens in U.S. open beta in late October 2026. If you have ASINs under 1,000 total ratings and reviews, this is a budget call before the holiday rush, not a neat feature to bookmark.
What happened (confirmed)
On September 29, 2026, Amazon Ads published Review Requests. The product reaches customers who recently purchased your product and invites them to submit a star rating or written review while they are shopping on Amazon. You create and manage campaigns in Amazon Ads Agent with the same bidding and budget controls you use for other Amazon Ads campaigns. Access also runs through the Amazon Ads Unified Campaign Management API.
Amazon Ads describes the flow in three steps: a recent purchaser sees a Review Requests ad, submits a rating in one click, then can add an optional written review with video or images. Placements are described as Amazon's highest-traffic pages. The launch page does not name every surface.
Open beta is United States only for now. Amazon Ads says additional marketplaces and Amazon properties are planned for future releases, with no dates attached. One Amazon Ads recap page lists the launch as November 2026, so treat late October as the target window, not a locked date.
Eligibility has two layers. At the account level: registered sellers and vendors with an advertising console account in good standing and no active policy violations. At the product level: fewer than 1,000 total ratings and reviews. Eligibility is checked when you create the campaign and while it runs. Review Requests for a product pause automatically once it reaches the 1,000 threshold.
Amazon Ads cites early test results from a closed beta in the U.S. from June 3 to 21, 2026: products received three times as many ratings and reviews per week compared to before the test. That is internal Amazon data from a 19-day before-and-after, not an independent readout. The page does not publish sample size, categories, spend, or cost per incremental review. Pricing beyond standard bidding and budget controls is not spelled out.
Sources: Amazon Ads "Accelerate authentic reviews with Review Requests" (September 29, 2026); Amazon Ads "Introducing Branded Conversations and Review Requests" (September 29, 2026).
Why this matters
Review count still sits in the conversion math for new ASINs and thin listings. Social proof is a conversion input, and paid invites only make sense if they move it faster than free tools already do. Amazon already gives you a free Request a Review path. Review Requests is a paid speed layer on top of that baseline, priced like an ad campaign and managed next to Sponsored Products in Ads Agent.
The 1,000 cap tells you Amazon's intent. This is for early social proof, not for mature bestsellers. Once you cross the threshold, the paid invites stop. The reviews stay on the detail page for every shopper after that, which is the structural argument Amazon Ads makes: the asset outlives the impression.
Q4 is when new holiday ASINs and restocked variants need ratings fast. Waiting until November to discover the open beta already filled your Ads Agent queue is a self-inflicted delay.
Who it affects most
• U.S. sellers and vendors with Ads console access and products under 1,000 total ratings and reviews
• New product launches and holiday ASINs that need social proof before peak traffic
• Catalogs with many thin ASINs where conversion still hinges on ratings volume
• Agencies and in-house media teams already running campaigns in Amazon Ads Agent or the Unified API
• Brands that still treat review generation as a free CX task instead of a bidded media line
What sellers should do this week
1. Pull every active U.S. ASIN with under 1,000 total ratings and reviews. Rank by revenue opportunity and launch date, not by vanity count.
2. Confirm Ads console standing. Active policy violations block eligibility before you ever see a campaign type.
3. Decide a cost-per-incremental-review ceiling against your free Request a Review baseline. Amazon has not published a unit price. You will learn it from bids and results.
4. When open beta lands in Ads Agent, start on a small set of new or thin ASINs. Track ratings collected, star mix, and detail-page conversion lift, not just spend.
5. Keep free Request a Review running. Treat Review Requests as incremental speed, not a replacement.
6. If you automate via the Unified Campaign Management API, ask your Ads account team what Review Requests fields and metrics the endpoints expose so your tooling is ready.
Our take
Amazon just turned "please leave a review" into a bidded placement on its busiest pages. The operator question is not whether reviews help. It is whether the paid invite beats your free baseline on cost per incremental rating before you burn budget chasing stars you would have gotten anyway.
Prove it on a handful of under-1,000 ASINs. Kill what does not clear your floor. Scale what does before the listings that need it most age out of eligibility.
If your new and thin ASINs still lean on hope for ratings heading into Q4, get Review Requests into a real cost test the week open beta opens. CoreTrex can help you pick the right under-1,000 ASINs, set a cost-per-review floor, and wire the test next to your existing Amazon Ads stack. Talk to a strategist.