Amazon Prime Day is fully integrated into brand and retailer’s marketing calendars regardless of their relationship with Amazon. Hard to believe the first-ever Prime Day happened in July 2015. Sales were just $1.5 billion during Prime Day 2016, the earliest year of eMarketer estimates. For context the event that year lasted only 24 hours and reached customers in nine countries.

This year Prime Day became a bit of a moving target because of COVID and speculation but Amazon was able to keep the date in October under its hat for quite a while, making it difficult for brands and competitors to plan.

While the coronavirus crisis has driven consumers online it may have also cooled some of the appetite for Amazon’s sixth annual Prime Day e-commerce mega-shopping holiday. Language from Amazon around the event this year was rather muted putting the focus on its support of its third-party marketplace. No need to set off alarm bells Morgan Stanley estimated Amazon will likely add about 9 million U.S. Prime households this year, 25% more than last year, to about 82 million, or 65% of U.S. households.

Amazon highlighted that it would invest $18 billion this year to help small and medium-sized businesses “succeed in its store” and “designed this Prime Day to support small businesses even more. Most experts feel this focus was a reaction to the US House Judiciary Committee’s antitrust subcommittee confronted Amazon’s Jeff Bezos over marketplace fairness in July. Members of Congress raised accusations from sellers that Amazon routinely mines their data to compete against them through its own first-party marketplace and inform the development of private-label knockoffs of best-selling products or burying seller’s product listings unless they invest in advertising. Regardless of the intent, the small to midsize business benefitted from the initiative.

“We are thrilled that Prime Day was a record-breaking event for small and medium businesses worldwide, with sales surpassing $3.5 billion—an increase of nearly 60% from last year,” said Jeff Wilke, CEO Worldwide Consumer Business at Amazon. “We’re also proud that Prime members saved more than $1.4 billion, and we look forward to providing more opportunities for our selling partners to grow and customers to save throughout the holiday season.”

Amazon Results:

• SimilarWeb research found that Prime Day 2020 web traffic was flat year over year, compared to more than 8% growth in 2019.
• Digital Commerce 360 estimates global sales over the two day period were $10.4 billion up from $7.16 billion in July 2019.
• eMarketer estimates US market Amazon’s Prime Day sales rose 42.8% from last year to $6.17 billion which was significantly lower than in 2019, when the year-over-year increase reached 65.2%.
• The average Prime Day order this year was $44.21 but 56% of households shopping Prime Day placed 2+ orders, bringing the average household spend to roughly $110.02 according to Numerator.
• The typical Prime Day shopper according to Numerator was a high-income, suburban female age 35-44.
• The Health and Beauty category represented 21% or Prime Day sales.
• Amazon agency Bobsled Marketing found an increase of 3.42X versus a brand’s average 30-day sales. In other words, sales during the two event days were on average 340% higher than in the previous 30 days.
• Bobsled Marketing said Clients who ran no deals at all saw on average a 110% increase in sales during the event. The worst performers were brands that had insufficient inventory on hand.
• Online searches the day before Prime Day 2020 dropped 48% versus the previously scheduled Prime Day in July, according to consumer search analytics firm Captify.
• Amazon designed this Prime Day to focus more support small businesses which including funding a promotion that helped drive over $900 million in sales for small businesses in the two weeks leading up to Prime Day.
• Amazon reported third party sellers globally, in the 19 countries where Prime Day took place, took in more than $3.5 billion, making the event “the two biggest days ever for third-party sellers, nearly all of which are small and medium-sized businesses.”
• Prime members saved over $1.4 billion during the event this year.

The Competition:

• E-commerce research company Edison Trends found that Amazon took 91%, Walmart 4%, Best Buy 3%, and Target 2% of spending during the Prime Day the period
• Amazon’s Prime Day share of the market against the other three declined just slightly to 91.2%, from 92.8%. Walmart’s share rose to 3.6%, from 2.8%, Best Buy’s share went up to 3.1%, from 2.7%
• Target said that sales grew by more than 2.5 times compared to last year, and its same-day fulfillment services were up nearly 300% during the event.

The Experts Opine:

”Prime Day was a big hit for the Prestige beauty brands in our portfolio, driving an aggregate 3x their daily average revenue. The big winners were brands that went “all in,” including price promotions on hero products and value sets.” Vanessa Kuykendal, VP of Business Development & Sales at Market Defense. “CPC’s were up significantly during Prime Day (up to 100% in some accounts), so brands with smaller budgets had a tough time staying competitive. We’re very encouraged about the rest of Q4, especially the luxury haircare and skincare categories.”

“Based on the language of Amazon’s press releases and SimilarWeb data, it appears that Prime Day 2020 was not the ‘biggest day ever,’” Citi analysts told CNBC. “Even if Prime Day proved to be disappointing, Amazon still stands to benefit from the accelerated shift to online shopping spurred by the pandemic. Prime Day and the holiday shopping rush are expected to help fuel a record fourth quarter for Amazon.”

Leon Lewis, founder of Daybreak Growth Partners, a boutique Amazon and D2C agency for startup CPG brands told Retail Dive, “Amazon shifted Prime Day’s messaging from the ‘biggest shopping event of the year’ to ‘get your gift shopping started early’ — effectively transforming Prime Day from a major event to a lackluster pre-Black Friday sales push. I think this continues the trend of Prime Day as increasingly ‘pay to play’ and less of a boon for small brands on the platform, many of whom saw little growth or flat YoY sales during this year’s event vs. 2019. With Amazon’s record year and already overburdened fulfillment operations, it’s not a surprise that they promoted less, and focused on bigger ticket items to minimize their risk of delays in delivery.”

“Leon Lewis, founder of Daybreak Growth Partners, a boutique Amazon and D2C agency for startup CPG brands told Retail Dive, “Amazon shifted Prime Day’s messaging from the ‘biggest shopping event of the year’ to ‘get your gift shopping started early’ — effectively transforming Prime Day from a major event to a lackluster pre-Black Friday sales push. I think this continues the trend of Prime Day as increasingly ‘pay to play’ and less of a boon for small brands on the platform, many of whom saw little growth or flat YoY sales during this year’s event vs. 2019. With Amazon’s record year and already overburdened fulfillment operations, it’s not a surprise that they promoted less, and focused on bigger ticket items to minimize their risk of delays in delivery.”

“The other retailers from what I can see were able to draft on Amazon’s event somewhat. Walmart adding days is a sign that they have seen some success,” he continued. “But Prime Day makes most sense to Amazon because the deals and conveniences are only an option if you are a Prime member. Retailers end up deeply discounting product, and the customers they get are so transactional that it’s one and done. Aside from trying to load balance, it’s just less strategic for competitors.”

“Sellers on the marketplace are fighting to get new consumer eyeballs on their products during the event. That’s driving pay-per-click bids and advertising costs up for Amazon’s Sponsored Ads that appear in search results and on product pages” Chan Stimart president and founder of Channies a children’s workbook brand told Digital Commerce 360. “I recall the same thing last year. Even though we sold more, it doesn’t directly convert because our ad spending increased so much.”

Bigger rivals like Target and Best Buy that held their own sales during the two days of Prime Day “yielded impressive results,” especially on day one of the event in the U.S. and U.K., according to digital marketing agency PMG. “It is yet to be seen whether a notable halo will emerge to help kick off an early shopping season in the U.S.”

“Amazon captured 90%+ of activity on the event early on, dwarfing any contribution from Target and Walmart,” Rick Watson, founder and CEO of RMW Commerce Consulting, told Retail Dive, citing Edison’s findings. “This points to how smart Amazon is to ‘own’ their own events. They will always get much more benefit than other retailers.”