Amazon Prime Day predictions Amazon on Wednesday announced the results of its annual Prime Day sale, which ended Tuesday, highlighting how the event gave a lift to its third-party sellers. For the second year, Amazon said merchants’ Prime Day sales grew more than its first-party retail business. Sellers netted $1.9 billion from pre-Prime Day promotions that gave customers a $10 discount if they shopped with small businesses. But Amazon’s publicity around the Prime Day results was muted compared with previous years, lacking the sales superlatives it typically offers to show how consumers flocked to the site to snap up heavily marked-down goods Prime Day is projected to hit 19% year-over-year growth. Significantly lower than 2020, amidst the pandemic, Prime sales increased by 43% over 2019, with a massive shift to online shopping during October when many brick-and-mortar retail stores were shut down. Amazon has previously characterized the event as its “biggest day ever” or the “largest shopping event in Amazon history.” That language was noticeably absent from this year’s results, with the company instead opting to note that Prime Day was the “two biggest days ever” for merchants.
Supply chain issues may have contributed to a more muted Prime Day. Third-party sellers were under added stress this year as they tackled widespread supply chain disruptions, ranging from the global chip shortage to a spike in Covid-19 cases at two of China’s busiest ports. Some sellers have reported that they opted to run fewer Prime Day discounts this year out of concern that they might run out of stock.
Tambo's view:
We have a more positive view of Prime Day than what has been reported in the press. Our clients consistently performed well over the two day event. Day One was considerably stronger than Day Two. Those brands that participated with deals saw 80-200% uplift in sales versus the weekly average. When good deals were combined with a comprehensive advertising campaign, we saw sales as much as quadruple over the two days.
Unsurprisingly, advertising bids were more aggressive, but we still saw a good ACOS performance thanks to more demand and better conversion. Even the brands that did not participate in Prime Day experienced an uplift in organic performance of between 30-50%, with the top end performers getting better results by upweighting advertising spend over the event
We will be writing a full review of Prime Day on our blog this week, so look out for the email.
Amazon retains crown as world’s most valuable brand
Amazon has been crowned the world’s most valuable brand for the third year in a row, according to the Kantar BrandZ 2021 Top 100 ranking. Amazon's success comes amid a record year of growth for brands on the ranking. Overall, the top 100 brands grew four and a half times higher than in a typical year and collectively are now worth $7trn, more than the GDPs of France and Germany combined. At number 47, Tesla is the fastest growing brand and it has become the most valuable car brand, growing its value by 275% to $43bn. It has more than doubled its value, alongside Chinese brands: Moutai (no.11, $109bn), Meituan (no.34, $52bn), TikTok (no.45, $44bn) and Pinduoduo (no.81, $22bn). 13 new entrants joined the 2021 global ranking, including Nvidia (no.12, $105bn), Zoom (no.52, $37bn), AMD (no.57, $33bn) and Spotify (no.99, $19bn). This growth has been prompted in part by increased optimism about a possible end to the pandemic, as well as steps taken by the US government to boost the nation’s economic prospects post-lockdown. Tambo's view:
Of the Top 10 global brands, only Apple grew at a faster rate than Amazon. The performance of the tech companies is no surprise. With travel, holidays, events and dining out curtailed during the Pandemic, consumers are spending more time and money online fuelling the ecosystems of Amazon, Apple and Google.
Click Central marketplace launches in Australia
Click Frenzy’s marketplace has now gone live. Rather than being a shopping events site, the new marketplace Click Central is available all year round as a brand new online shopping destination for Aussies.
Merchants joining the Click Central marketplace will benefit from the huge volumes of traffic generated during Click Frenzy events, with shoppers encouraged to continue shopping on the marketplace to earn rewards. Click Frenzy have a database of some 1.6 million shoppers on their database ready to market Click Central to.
The new marketplace is launching with well over 100,000 products across all key categories including Beauty & Health; Women; Men; Home & Living; Appliances; Toys & Games; Furniture; and Electronics. The technology platform chosen for Frenz Central is Mirakl, the global leader in marketplace platforms used by Catch and Bunnings in Australia. This has enabled them to launch the marketplace in just three months.
Tambo's view:
Mirakl is behind most of the new retail marketplaces around the world. However, Click Central is different to all the other new marketplaces as it is linked to a business that organises a series of shopping events rather than being an extension of an e-commerce site.
The arrival of Amazon in Australia poses a big threat to Click Frenzy, especially with Prime Day and Black Friday competing directly with their own events. They will hope that Click Central will keep customers away from the clutches of Amazon and encourage them to buy more frequently.
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