It’s official: Amazon’s October Prime Day is taking place this week on October 8 and October 9. Last year, third-party vendors sold 150 million items during the event. Most were on the smaller side, with 60% of items priced less than $20. Protein shakes, Liquid IV, batteries, and Amazon devices made the top of the list, according to CNBC.
This year, we expect that consumers will use October Prime Big Deals Day to stock up on the items that they need, rather than the items that they want – but, as always, it’s going to come down to strategic pricing and figuring out how to adjust your bidding based on real-time insights.
To understand what we can expect this week, Pacvue founder and President Melissa Burdick recently sat down with Jerome de Guigne, CEO of e-Comas, as well as Ryan Dietrich, SVP of Commerce, and Mathew Boardman, Director of Content, at Monks to learn how brands are adapting and innovating this year.
Here are our five big takeaways:
1. Brands Continue to Join the Prime Day Rush
Ryan explained that Monks saw a significant increase in sellers deciding to advertise during Prime Day in the summer. He expects the trend to continue. This has also made things more competitive.
“Prime Day 2024 showed that vendors, retail partners, and brands are more open to discounting. In years past, we’ve had around 40% of our vendors not participating because of the pricing strategy,” Ryan said. “That went up dramatically. We saw more units sold… Our CPC metrics were 20% higher, because it was more competitive than ever.”
2. Brands Double Down on High-Quality Content
With a more competitive landscape and higher product prices, Matt says, more companies need to focus on optimizing product page content. The ads are what drives the traffic to the product, but it’s the content that gets the real results. This has opened up a new opportunity for challenger brands, too.
“Established market leaders have relied on heritage, but the content was ‘meh,’’ Mathew told Melissa. “It was fine five years ago… Your content really needs to sing to show that you’re still worth that price.”
3. Advertisers Go Beyond Performance Tactics
With Amazon’s new announcements about DSP and programmatic capabilities during Amazon Accelerate last month, it’s clear that we can expect more investments in off-site ad solutions. Part of the reason is that, as brands all join the retail media wave, it’s going to take more strategic marketing to build brand equity.
Growing a brand starts at the top of the funnel. Jerome thinks that there’s going to be more diverse formats and channels going forward as the competitive landscape gets more complex. ”You can be a lot better prepared with the insights from things like Amazon Marketing Cloud ahead of time,” he said. “The specific insights on the customer journey can be much more precise. And being more precise where you spend, can help you save a lot of money to grow at a later stage.”
4. The Big Screen Goes Mainstream
Jerome, Ryan, and Mathew all pointed to one underappreciated growth channel: Prime Video. With Amazon’s default to ad-supported CTV, there’s more supply than ever for brands of all sizes to get on TV. Jerome advises a “test and learn” tactic when it comes to a CTV strategy, but thinks that Prime Video ads will be the next golden opportunity for upcoming sales days.
Ryan agrees, explaining, “Sponsored Video is really, really big for us. Sponsored Brand Video is performing well. Video still feels under-priced considering what you get. This continues to be a gold mine.”
5. Profitability Becomes Cool Again
For a long time, Amazon Prime Day – whether in July or October – could be counted on as a surefire way to boost sales. As ad prices have gone up, the return-on-ad-spend has gone down. Products can only get discounted so much. As Matt says, “The price has plateaued.”
With the lessons from Amazon Prime Day, we think that Amazon Big Deal Days is going to see a return to more cautious spending. As Jerome explains, advertisers are more likely to be strategic in lowering bids. His advice? “Wait for others to spend their money and wait for the customers who are ready to buy. Be very careful about your profitability – you can be happy you sold a lot, but you may not have made a profit.”
Are you ready for next week’s Prime Day event? How about Cyber 5? Get holiday sales-ready and start measuring your ad performance better with Pacvue’s new iROAS Dashboard.
