How Amazon Ads Brand Innovation Lab accelerated innovation and unlocked growth with Webflow

Showing brands what's possible when they think big

Brand Innovation Lab (BIL) shows brands what's possible when they think big, transforming bold ideas into custom experiences delivered across Amazon's entire canvas. Operating as a specialized innovation partner within Amazon Ads, BIL produces hundreds of custom campaign executions per year — plus hundreds of pitch concepts — for leading advertisers across all categories, whether they sell on Amazon or not.

These full-funnel campaigns are inspired by trillions of streaming, shopping, and browsing signals and feature creative ideas and ad innovations that delight customers and differentiate brands in today's crowded media landscape. The creative bar is deliberately high: brands come to BIL for experiences that are memorable, interactive, and worthy of being shared.

As demand for these custom experiences grew, the team saw an opportunity to evolve their production model. Their design technologists — rare, hybrid talents who think like designers and build like engineers — were spending significant time on landing page production: spinning up CI/CD pipelines, configuring code bundles, and manually building pages for campaigns. Meanwhile, creative designers with award-winning portfolios and a clear vision for rich, interactive experiences couldn't bring their work to life without a technical intermediary at every step.

The team had already optimized their workflow to approximately 110 hours per landing page build. But they recognized that to scale their *ambitions* — not just their output — they needed to fundamentally rethink who does what.

"Before Webflow, we weren't able to deliver a page in under two weeks because of the time it took to design and pass those over to our design technologists to implement. We saw an opportunity to restructure that entirely."

‍— Alex Mejias, Head of Global Design Technology and Interactive Experience, Amazon Ads Brand Innovation Lab

Elevating every role to its highest-impact work

The structural opportunity was clear. Design technologists — among the hardest roles to hire in tech, with a 6–8 month recruitment process involving portfolio reviews, whiteboard assessments, and rigorous technical screenings — were spending time on production scaffolding rather than the innovation and R&D work they'd been hired to lead. Creative designers had the vision for rich, interactive experiences but lacked tools that matched their ambition.

The team also recognized that as accessibility regulations evolved globally, they needed tooling that could catch compliance gaps proactively — during the build process rather than after launch. A reactive approach to accessibility simply wouldn't scale.

"Because of Webflow, we were able to shift our campaign development hours over to designers. That means designers can make the vision come to life, design technologists can be more future facing, and we can reduce hiring times."

‍— Alex Mejias, Head of Global Design Technology and Interactive Experience, Amazon Ads Brand Innovation Lab

A rigorous evaluation across 14 platforms

"Our workflows with Figma, Claude Code, and Webflow's MCP have been an absolute game changer. I really see this as our future workflow — taking technologists out of some of that cycle and bringing in designers to leverage AI to fill that technical gap."

‍— Alex Mejias, Head of Global Design Technology and Interactive Experience, Amazon Ads Brand Innovation Lab

Before committing to Webflow, BIL ran a structured evaluation across 14 different platforms — commercial products, open-source tools, and everything in between. They developed 22 user stories across four priority tiers, each mapped to a real workflow the team needed to support.

The requirements were non-negotiable:

• Component systems: the ability to bring their existing design system into the tool and cascade updates across builds.
• Portability: the ability to export finished sites to Amazon's secure, internally-governed hosting environment.
• Accessibility: built-in tooling to catch contrast issues and WCAG compliance gaps proactively — before launch.
• Rich animation: GSAP support and scroll-based storytelling capabilities to deliver the interactive experiences their campaigns are known for.

Webflow met all priority-zero requirements and delivered on several additional capabilities in year one.

Restructuring how creative work gets done

The real transformation wasn't about the tool — it was about what the tool made possible: a complete restructuring of how creative work gets done, with every role elevated to its highest-value contribution.

Designers now own the build. Creative designers — who previously routed every layout, animation, and interaction through a design technologist — can now bring their full visual vision to life directly, without compromise. As Alex put it: "The folks who have the vision can now make their experiences come to life without having to compromise — without needing the technical knowledge to do it."

Design technologists returned to innovation. Freed from production landing page work, they shifted back to prototyping, R&D, and delivering BIL's most technically complex campaigns — including AI-powered workflows, immersive entertainment integrations, and the experimental work that makes BIL an innovation incubator within Amazon Ads.

Onboarding accelerated dramatically. Where design technologists required approximately two months to onboard to the internal tech stack, a new designer was building a live campaign page within his first week because he already knew Webflow.

Hiring flexibility expanded. The team can now bring in designers, contractors, or agencies who already have Webflow knowledge — broadening the talent pool significantly and reducing time-to-productivity.

New business models became viable. A sponsorship segment the team had been working to scale was successfully delivered at scale using Webflow templates — unlocking significant projected growth through a model that wasn't feasible under the previous stack.

Governance stayed intact. Webflow's role-based permissions let program managers make safe content edits without risking design integrity. Designers control the structure; managers update the copy. Everyone stays in their lane.

Measurable results — and a foundation for what's next

"Our account executive cited a stat about reducing development times by 50%, and I didn't quite believe it at first. But our number came in at 49.5% — almost right there."

‍— Alex Mejias, Head of Global Design Technology and Interactive Experience, Amazon Ads Brand Innovation Lab

The results were immediate and measurable:

• Development time dropped by nearly 50%. What used to take two weeks now takes roughly one. The hours saved were reallocated to designers, elevating both creative quality and team capacity.
• Scaffolding overhead eliminated. No more spinning up CI/CD pipelines or permission bundles for every short-lived campaign — removing repetitive work that added no creative value.
• Design systems scaled across the portfolio. A unified, flexible design system in Webflow cascades updates across all pages, saving approximately 200 hours per campaign and ensuring brand consistency at scale.
• Accessibility became proactive. The team now catches contrast issues and WCAG gaps before launch using built-in tooling — a significant improvement over manual post-launch remediation.
• AI workflows integrated. The team has deployed Figma, Webflow's MCP, and Claude Code into a unified workflow that has driven build times down even further. Designers can take a Figma layout and move it to a live Webflow page with minimal manual development. AI agents built into internal tools can make content changes on behalf of solution managers without those managers ever needing to open Webflow.

But the most significant result isn't a metric — it's a shift in what the team spends its time on. With production streamlined, BIL can focus on what it does best: pioneering advertising experiences that push boundaries and create new possibilities for brands worldwide.

Looking ahead

Alex sees AI and Webflow enabling something even more ambitious: dynamic pages that adapt to where a customer is in their journey — whether they're discovering a brand for the first time or ready to make a purchase. That's not just faster production — it's a fundamentally different model for how custom advertising experiences work.

The team is currently scaling from pilot to full deployment, with plans to build 100+ sites in Webflow this year and expand significantly the following year. They're pursuing deeper integration with Amazon Ads' broader canvas, positioning Webflow as a central platform in their creative workflow. They're also exploring ways to streamline collaboration with advertisers — particularly those who already use Webflow internally — to reduce revision cycles and accelerate time to market.

"I think we can deepen the partnership between Amazon Ads and Webflow so that we can give access to brands who already have designers who use Webflow internally to bring their pages to us — and not have back-and-forth revisions," Alex said.

The vision is ambitious, but the foundation is in place. With Webflow, Brand Innovation Lab has moved from optimized for today to building for what's next.

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