From its beginnings in 2015 as a celebration of Amazon’s 20th anniversary, Amazon Prime Day has grown into a massive and highly anticipated annual event. What started in 2015 as a 24-hour event, available to consumers in just nine countries, has grown into a global event spanning 20 countries and lasting 48 hours.
From understanding the power of AI-driven personalization to navigating the growing influence of social commerce and leveraging the reach of connected TV, the opportunities for brands to engage with their audiences continue to expand. Here are the top trends for Prime Day 2024 and how your brand can capitalize on them.
AI-Driven Personalization
The brands setting themselves apart are those embracing personalization and utilizing AI tools to create deeper connections with their audience. AI-driven personalization leverages various data sources of user activity — such as past purchase data or browsing history — to deliver tailored messaging to individual consumers. As AI gathers more data, it adapts to changing habits, ensuring the messages remain personalized and relevant.
Amazon Prime Day Impact
Leading up to Prime Day, brands leveraging AI-driven predictive analytics can fine-tune personalization. AI capabilities enable the processing of millions of data interactions to create specific customer profiles, allowing brands to deliver personalized ad content, product recommendations, and offers that resonate with each specific consumer. With AI’s capacity for quick and accurate insights, brands can analyze social media interactions, search trends, and online behaviors to anticipate shifts in market trends, enabling more strategic decisions around budget allocation, content selection, and channel preferences to maximize ROI when Prime Day arrives.
Brands can also leverage Precision AI for Prime Day campaigns to streamline campaign creation for new ASINs while maintaining consistency. Precision AI enables brands to set target ROAS/ACOS goals, ensuring that campaigns are automatically optimized for peak performance during tentpole events. By integrating Precision AI with Latitude, brands can focus on profitable ASINs and avoid wasted ad spend during Prime Day, driving efficiency and profitability. With Precision AI’s automated optimization and Latitude’s ASIN-focused approach, brands can effectively manage Prime Day campaigns while maximizing ROI on Amazon.
Social Commerce Growth
Social commerce has grown in popularity due to its seamless integration between social media and shopping channels. With the average time US adults spend on social media projected to surpass 108 minutes per day in 2024, up more than 25 minutes since 2019, this trend is expected to continue to grow.
The continued integration of commerce and social media platforms has ignited the expansion of influencers and their sales influence. According to Adobe’s analysis of Amazon’s marketing efforts during the 2023 Prime Day, influencers and creators contributed to an 11% lift in revenue, while social media accounted for 4%. Partnering with influencers gives brands access to specific audiences, allowing them to expand their reach and specificity. Brands can leverage the trust and credibility an influencer has built within their community to drive awareness, conversions, and sales.
Amazon has worked closely with macro influencer Alix Earle across multiple TikTok and Instagram content pieces leading up to Prime Day. She has also been featured on Amazon’s live stream event, ‘Duel of the Deals.’ Alix talks about the products she buys from Amazon on her Amazon storefront, and her recommendations and reviews are often highlighted by media outlets. Her impact was evident during Prime Day 2023, as her recommendation of the Lineage Lip Sleeping Mask propelled the product from 182nd to the top spot in its category.
Example of Prime Day collaboration between L’Oreal and influencer Leisha Patidar
Amazon Prime Day Impact
Partnering with influencers and relevant thought leaders is a strategic way brands can extend their reach to broader audiences. Prime Day offers brands a unique opportunity to own their category, as it’s currently not as saturated as events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. By activating influencer messaging across various platforms, brands can effectively stand out from competitors. And with the right messaging, targeting, and timing, brands can leverage influencers to increase brand awareness and drive conversions, side by side with Amazon Ads campaigns to boost Prime Day sales.
Examples of WEOKIE Federal Credit Union and OU Credit Union leveraging hashtag and giveaway campaigns for Prime Day
Social media platforms play a big role in sparking Prime Day engagement through various strategies such as hashtag campaigns, giveaways linked to credit card usage, and targeted messaging. These platforms serve as central hubs for consumers to exchange Prime Day experiences and spread the word about the best deals. Amazon’s latest “Consult-a-Friend” feature highlights the growing emphasis on social collaboration in the buying journey.
Engage Across Channels with Connected TV
As the retail media landscape evolves, Connected TV (CTV) plays an even more significant role when planning budgets and campaigns. A survey done by MNTN and Digiday revealed that 76% of advertisers said CTV is either moderately or very significant to their advertising campaigns, and 24% of brands expect CTV to represent 60-80% of their revenue in 2024. With revenue reaching nearly $26 billion in 2023 and projected to surpass $42 billion by 2028, CTV’s growth trajectory remains strong.
CTV seamlessly integrates with cross-channel advertising strategies, providing brands another way to target their audience across the TV landscape, spanning streaming services like Amazon Prime, Netflix, Disney+, and YouTube. With enhanced targeting capabilities, brands can effectively reach their target audiences with ads tailored to their lifestyle and viewing habits. The real-time data insights from CTV enable brands to analyze viewership habits, trends, and ad performance. This empowers brands to act on real-time information to optimize ad performance, elevate engagement, and boost conversion rates.
Amazon Prime Day Impact
Streaming TV and Sponsored TV campaigns represent new avenues for advertisers looking to effectively engage audiences across channels throughout their shopping and entertainment journeys. With no minimum spend required, brands can incorporate Sponsored TV as part of a multi-channel Prime Day strategy. Repurposing existing video content to generate new creative assets not only saves time and money but also reinforces the narrative brands have already built. Creating interactive Streaming TV ads with features like ‘remote click capabilities’ or QR codes enables audiences to explore products without interrupting their viewing experience.
Example of Torpedo7 utilizing a QR code ad to drive customer engagement
“Not every advertiser has the financial and operational means to buy at that scale (Linear TV) across multiple partners, which is why Sponsored TV ends up being a great starter option on Amazon who want to see the impact of advertising their products on the big screen.”
Garrett Dale, Chief Partnership Officer, Kepler
When it comes to reporting, STV signals on AMC provide valuable insights such as custom attribution, path to conversion, and incremental reach analysis. These insights significantly enhance the evaluation of campaign performance, allowing brands to refine their strategies and optimize their Prime Day advertising efforts effectively.
Adapting to Amazon’s Latest Shifts
Prime Day has been constantly evolving since its inception in 2015, with Amazon making changes along the way. From implementing new image requirements to offering additional insights, here are some key shifts from Amazon to be aware of this year.
Sponsored Brands Campaigns
Amazon’s January announcement regarding the mandatory use of custom images instead of ASIN or stock images for Sponsored Brands Campaigns marks a shift in brand ad strategy. Effective August 31st, this requirement will be enforced for all product collection ads using the API or Amazon advertising console. Any Sponsored Brands ads without custom imagery will no longer deliver or receive impressions. While it will require more effort, the return is worth it. On average, Sponsored Brands ads with branded creative generate a 50% increase in CTR and 60% increase in branded search than ads with generic images. Leveraging the capabilities of an AI image generation tool, currently available in Pacvue, streamlines the process of testing multiple creative assets across target audiences, sharing multiple product images, and seasonal images.
Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC)
Brands can leverage Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) to dive deeper into audience segment insights and expand their custom audience options. With access to audience and shopping metrics in Amazon stores, brands can identify high-performance segments, optimize audience strategies, and create new Amazon DSP audience groups. Brands can also analyze audience attributes, like new-to-brand consumers, seasonal shoppers, and repeat customers to build and tailor their campaigns. With additional insights, brands can measure the reach of their Prime Day campaigns among relevant audience segments to uncover new opportunities to drive reach and engagement. By integrating first-party data signals into AMC, brands can gain a more comprehensive understanding of their target audience and create custom Amazon DSP audiences based on cross-source analysis.
“We believe the gap between brands using AMC and those not using it will widen with time: for instance, the ones using AMC will be able to use their budget more efficiently and win market share. Using the path to conversion or the time to conversion, brands will know the best mix of campaigns and when to start pushing the spend, when not to stop, and when to adjust to avoid overspending”
Marius Popov, Head of Advertising at e-Comas
Conclusion
Personalized experiences have become key in today’s retail media landscape. The adoption of AI-driven personalization has emerged as a game-changer, allowing brands to build deeper connections with consumers by tailoring specific messages based on purchase habits. And by integrating tools like Precision AI and Latitude, brands can focus on profitable ASINs and avoid wasted ad spend during Prime Day, driving efficiency and profitability. Social commerce continues to grow, with brands finding new ways to leverage user-generated content to build brand authenticity and directly involve the customer base. The growth of Connected TV (CTV) highlights the importance of targeted advertising and real-time data analytics in reaching and engaging with audiences effectively. In embracing these innovative trends, brands can unlock new opportunities this Prime Day to connect with customers, optimize ad spend, and drive sales.
Learn More
If you haven’t already, check out our article on the Top Strategies to Win Amazon Prime Day 2024. Stay tuned in the coming weeks for more strategies and insights that will help your brand win Prime Day. And contact us today to learn more about the Pacvue Platform and how our team can help scale your brand across dozens of retailers.
