Prime Day 2024: Our Predictions

So the worst kept secret is out! Prime Day is happening 16th & 17th July. Last year's Prime Day was a record breaker with global sales reaching $12.9 billion, a 6.7% increase from the previous year. Day 1 of the event become the largest ever sales day in Amazon's history, with 375 million items purchased.We saw this reflected in our clients' performances too, with July Prime Day outperforming most targets last year and delivering fantastic returns. The sense was that Prime Day becoming a more established, expected event in consumers' calendars - with inflation driving increased discount shopping behaviour - contributed to high demand. Additionally, and likely reflecting the challenged consumer retail spending, the strength and depth of deals from brands were more significant than we've witnessed at Tambo before.

What to expect this year then? 5 Key Points:

1. Deal Strength: On the back of a strong performance last year, we'd expect many brands to be planning for the same again. Competition will be high, discounts will be deep and we expect them to be across the core of most ranges, rather than stock brands just want to sell through.
2. Consumer Demand: Inflation is significantly improved YOY in all core Amazon markets, which will bring some consumer spending relief. However interest rates are still high (and overall prices are higher too) even if inflation is lower. On balance, we'd expect to see a similar trend to last year - a high demand for great discounts. This could well be boosted further by a reported increase in Amazon media investment to promote the event.
3. Upper Funnel or Lower Funnel?: Typically CPC inflation is aggressive during the event days in particular. Many brands will be working out where they can most effectively invest advertising budgets: do you own your core terms whatever the cost, or do you try getting your deals in front of shoppers outside of a search environment? With the launch of Prime Video Ads this year, together with AMC's ability to measure Amazon's upper funnel whilst creating custom audiences for it, we'd expect a higher share of advertising investment in reach and video-focused formats than in past years. Brands that are bold here, both with placements and with creative, will do really well.
4. Lead In or Be Left Out: We know from our own AMC analysis, isolating ad exposed user journeys across lead in, peak and lead out - if you aren't reaching shoppers in the lead in period, your advertising is less effective overall. Will the same trend play out this year, or like Black Friday, will the lead in period just become an extension of the peak event days?
5. The Role of Technology: There's no doubt there's been a levelling up of Amazon technology over the past few years (case in point our very own Tambo Compass). From an insight and activation perspective, many brands are now far more 'tooled' up than before. But there's having good technology and using good technology. AMC audiences and smart bidding rules will make a huge difference for our clients this year... but we aren't going to give away all our secrets.

Will July Prime Day 2024 go one better than 2023?! I think so.