The first half of Amazon’s unprecedented 4-day Prime Day 2025 event is complete. Here’s what our team observed across our client portfolio in the first 48 hours…
The big story this year? The sheer excessiveness of it all. The unprecedented 4-day length, overlapping retailer events, massive deal depths, and deals dominating search results (up to 81% of SERP real estate in some beauty & wellness categories). Prime Day has evolved from a shopping event into a shopping season.
Industry Headlines Missed the Mark:
While early headlines claimed “slow starts” to Prime Day, our portfolio brands were busy crushing it! Across like brands in our portfolio, Prime Day Day 1 2025 decisively outperformed 2024:
- Sales climbed 66% from Day One last year
- 4X average sales lift on Day One vs. June (7.2X with outliers included)
- 64% unit lift with a 14% rise in average selling price
- Ad spend rose only 20%, trimming media cost to 2.9%
- Client profit more than doubled with margin lifting to 34%
Here’s the thing about early snapshots: judging a four-day event by its first four hours is like calling a movie boring after the opening credits. When you’re comparing apples to oranges – four hours of a four-day event versus the opening of a two-day event – you’re measuring timing, not performance. Stay tuned for more data and our complete YoY comparison coming soon…
Day Two Reality Check and Performance Predictions:
Day Two, as expected, was noticeably slower than Day One. We’re seeing signs of consumers holding out for final-day deals and making last-minute purchases. That said, we anticipate Day Three will be even slower for most brands. Excluding outliers, we observed a 36.2% decline in sales from Day One to Day Two.
Adobe Analytics projects this 4-day event will generate $23.8 billion in online spending, which is equivalent to “two Black Fridays” based on 2024’s performance, representing a 28.4% year-over-year increase! Our early internal data shows strong advertising performance with our agency’s Managed Ad Spend up 20% vs Day 1 last year while CPCs were down an average of $0.32 compared to last year and CTRs holding steady around 0.15% (vs 0.16% last year). We’ll be watching closely as the 4-day format may shift traditional patterns.
Shopping Behavior Shift:
Branded search spend is significantly outpacing non-branded spend, suggesting consumers are arriving with pre-planned purchases rather than discovery-driven browsing. This could indicate a fundamental change in Prime Day shopping behavior. We are also seeing more sustained sales all day long with morning and evening peaks, but without the typical midday slowdown we’ve seen in past years. We’re in uncharted territory with this 4-day format!
Competitive Response:
Major retailers launched unprecedented counter-programming with Target Circle Week, Walmart’s 6-day event (notably without membership requirements), and Best Buy’s extended sale all running concurrently, directly challenging Amazon’s dominance. Amazon is countering by expanding beyond its own platform, running ads on TikTok encouraging users to link their Amazon account to TikTok so they can shop Prime deals without leaving the app, a significant push into social commerce.
Prime Day 2025 Platform & Feature Updates
Rufus AI Integration:
AI is becoming more prominent with Rufus answers occasionally auto-opening in search results. Amazon seems to be selectively testing Rufus integrated default searches on some search terms. Additionally, customers can ask Rufus about price history to validate deals (a feature available since Rufus’ release, though we expect increased usage during discount events like Prime Day), with some responses including data visualizations of historical pricing trends. This represents a major shift toward AI-mediated commerce that could reduce impulse purchases while increasing deal trust.
*Update: By Day 3, Rufus became significantly more personalized and sponsored for Prime Day. Amazon updated Rufus with a dedicated Prime Day theme, leading off with suggested prompts about “Prime Day Savings for Me” and “Biggest Savings on Amazon Today.” The “Prime Day Savings for Me” prompt produced relevant and accurate deal options based on browsing and saved cart history. Notably, these personalized prompt replies included sponsored listings at the top of Rufus results, and both in-app and Rufus changed the background color from blue to yellow for personalized suggestions. (Source: Todd Hassenfelt)
“Today’s Big Deals” Innovation:
Amazon introduced daily themed deal drops launching at midnight PDT with limited-time deep discounts from premium brands, creating sustained engagement across all 4 days rather than the traditional front-loaded rush.
Prime Discount Flexibility:
Despite Amazon’s stated 12-hour cutoff, brands can still create new Prime Discounts during the event (just not add to existing deals). New submissions require a 6-hour approval window.
Cart-Based Deal Alerts:
Amazon is sending customers personalized deal notifications via email for items sitting in shopping carts. Check out the example screenshot, where Amazon shared a 16% off alert trigger for a previously added product. Smart move for re-engaging hesitant buyers on higher-ticket items.
Subscribe & Save Changes:
Products with S&S subscriptions now show “See options” instead of “Add to Cart” language in certain placements.
Discovery & Discounting Insights
Reference Price Policy Change:
Amazon quietly shifted their Prime Day discount calculation method this year. Previously, they used trailing 30-day Amazon pricing as the reference point for discount percentages. Now they’re using the lowest price from any retailer (including competitors like Ulta) within the trailing 30 days as the baseline for Prime Day badge eligibility. This undisclosed change could have significantly impacted brands who ran external sales, though our portfolio saw minimal effects.
Price Transparency:
Amazon’s main deals page shows limited upfront pricing, with only featured slots and select paid placements from big brands like Unilever and L’Oréal displaying prices before click-through. For most featured deal, customers must visit PDPs to see actual deal pricing.
Homepage Features:
The brands getting the most earned placements are those leaning heavily into discounting one or a handful of hero products at 50+% off. Several of our clients landed prime real estate in Amazon’s “over 50% off” homepage section! Amazon appears to be prioritizing deeper discounts and pushing brands toward more significant deals this year. Amazon has also removed the filter by discount option but is instead highlighting the biggest discounts offered on the site.
Premium Placement Patterns:
Another key observation: many of the brands receiving premium Prime Day placements appear to be either owned by large conglomerates, part of the Premium Beauty program and also paying for SAS support. It’s clear that Amazon isn’t giving independent brands the same spotlight it once did during this event. That said, we expect more placements to open up as products go out of stock, creating new opportunities for well-stocked brands during the final day of Prime Day.
Affiliate Marketing Push:
Big brands are leaning heavily into affiliate partnerships this year with Prime Day-specific campaigns. Major brands like Samsung are offering significant commissions to influencers on high-ticket items like TVs, indicating brands are prioritizing influencer-driven sales channels alongside traditional advertising during the event.
Content Strategy Wins:
Some of our clients are testing Amazon Live streams during Day One, providing a sales lift during the event, plus ongoing visibility when pinned to storefronts. Additionally, brands have been using the language “Summer Sales” on storefront and PDP creative assets, allowing them to upload compliant graphics around their discounts for Prime Day.
Stay tuned for many more insights as the extended Prime Day 2025 event unfolds!
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