First published in Selling From the Beach on October 12, 2026.
The short version
When someone else is spending your money and gets paid no matter how it goes, they're spending it for themselves first.
There's one house a real estate agent won't sell cheap. Their own.
In early October 2026, I sold my house. In only 3 days. And it got me thinking if I accepted the offer too quickly. In 2005, two economists at the University of Chicago, Steven Levitt (the Freakonomics guy) and Chad Syverson, went looking for a strange kind of house sale: the kind where the agent is also the owner. They pulled nearly 100,000 home sales from the Chicago suburbs. About 3,300 of those houses belonged to agents. They compared each one to similar houses on the same block.
When agents sold their own house, they waited 9.5 days longer and got about 3.7% more. On a typical house, that's about $7,700.
Same job. Same suburbs. Same kind of houses. So why would an agent fight for an extra $7,700 on their own house and not on yours?
The reason is boring. On your house, an extra $10,000 puts about $150 in the agent's pocket. Waiting another week for a better offer isn't worth $150, so the agent takes the quick sale. On their own house, nearly all of the $10,000 is theirs, so they wait.
Amazon launched its own version of that real estate agent.
It's called Full-Funnel Campaigns. It was announced on September 29, 2026 and it's open to every advertiser in the US. It puts sponsored ads, display, video and streaming TV into one campaign. Amazon's own announcement says you provide the budget, the products and the creative, "and Amazon's AI handles the rest."
Amazon gets paid on every dollar you spend, whether those sales make you money or not. And it knows more about its own auction than you ever will.
Other sellers I talk to got suspicious the minute it showed up in their accounts. I run my ads on rules I can read. I didn't write them (someone much smarter did), but when a bid moves, I can see why. A Full-Funnel campaign asks me to give that up.
I'm not saying Full-Funnel is going to be a bad thing for your account. Just be aware of whose incentives are whose.
When someone else is spending your money and gets paid no matter how it goes, they're spending it for themselves first.
How does Amazon charge for Full-Funnel Campaigns?
As of October 14, 2026, a Full-Funnel Campaign uses a daily budget that Amazon's AI spreads across sponsored ads, display, video and streaming TV in real time, and advertisers pay either per click or per thousand ad impressions (cost-per-click or cost-per-mille), depending on where the ad is served.
There are no upfront fees or additional charges for the AI running the campaign across formats or for the ads it makes for you.
What can an advertiser set and see in a Full-Funnel Campaign?
Before launch, advertisers update their budget, products and an optional return on ad spend (ROAS) threshold.
Amazon's announcement says reporting gives a unified view of performance across formats, with standard metrics like impressions, clicks and sales.
The AI optimizes over an initial learning period of about two weeks.
What does Amazon claim Full-Funnel Campaigns deliver?
Amazon's page claims that advertisers observe 67% higher long-term ROAS than independently configured campaigns on average.
Its footnote describes early beta results from June to August 2026 and says individual performance may vary.
How much does a real estate agent keep from an extra $10,000?
In the study, the agent receives only about 1.5 percent of each extra dollar the house sells for.
In the study's own example, if selling a house costs the agent $200 a week in time and money, the agent gains nothing by waiting a week for an offer $13,333 higher. The owner of a $300,000 house would earn over 4 percent by waiting that same week.
At the agent's 1.5 percent, the $13,333 offer pays the agent the $200 a week it costs to wait, while the homeowner gains 4.4%:
| Step | Math | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Agent's cut of an extra $10,000 | 10,000 x 1.5% | $150 |
| Agent's cut of an extra $13,333 | 13,333 x 1.5% | $200 |
| Homeowner's one-week gain on a $300,000 house | 13,333 divided by 300,000 | 4.4% |