Amazon’s 10th Prime Day is officially behind us. And while the company reported yet another “record-breaking” event, seasoned sellers and strategists know the truth lies deeper than press release figures. Prime Day 2025 wasn’t about wild growth — it was about surgical precision, full-funnel orchestration, and knowing when to push and when to protect margins. From where I sit — managing Amazon growth across the U.S., Canada, and UK for global brands — this year’s Prime Day was less a sprint and more a balancing act. Brands weren’t just chasing volume; they were optimizing every impression for long-term value.
Prime Day by the Numbers: Strong Surface, Subtle Shifts
While Amazon celebrated “hundreds of millions of items sold,” the granular data tells a slightly more nuanced story:
YoY sales growth for most brands I work with landed between +3% and +7%, noticeably flatter than in prior years.
Ad spend surged across the board, with CPCs up 15–25% in categories like supplements, consumer tech, and personal care.
Conversion rates remained healthy — but only for brands that had properly segmented their targeting and refreshed their creative in advance.
Top Performing Categories
Amid the overall Prime Day activity, a few product categories stood out with significantly stronger performance.
Our data showed that Baby, Electronics, and Beauty led the way — reinforcing the trend that consumers view Prime Day not just as a chance for impulse purchases, but as a strategic moment to stock up on both everyday essentials and higher-end items.
Meanwhile, as anticipated, the Grocery category saw more modest growth, receiving less promotional focus and experiencing the smallest sales lift across the board.
Across the accounts I lead or consult, four consistent patterns emerged among the top performers:
1. Smart Spend Allocation Over Aggressive Bidding
Brands that front-loaded spend early in Day 1 or focused solely on Sponsored Products saw diminishing returns. Those that diversified across Sponsored Brand Video (SBV), custom creatives, and Display with refined audience retargeting saw better engagement and more efficient outcomes — even if ACOS ticked up.
2. Content That Cut Through the Noise
Success wasn’t driven by discounts alone. Brands that stood out had:
• Short-form video (under 15 seconds) in SBV placements • A+ content that conveyed benefits instantly • Product detail pages with updated reviews and fresh Q&A
3. Tight Ops and Inventory Coordination
Inventory challenges continued to separate the prepared from the scrambling. A few sellers ran out of key SKUs mid-day. Others timed secondary lightning deals or backup FBA shipments to perfection, catching the late-Day 2 lift many didn’t see coming.
4. A Plan Beyond Prime Day
Brands that used Prime Day to seed visibility for Q3 — rather than chasing ROAS in isolation — are now better positioned to retarget, remarket, and scale. Sponsored Display views retargeting and DSP pushes are already showing strong early-week results.
Day Two Was the Sleeper Hit
One unexpected trend: Day Two often outperformed Day One in conversion rate and even net revenue. Shoppers seem increasingly willing to wait, compare, and strike only when the deal feels right — or when reminders (retargeting, SMS, or social re-engagement) bring them back to cart.
If Prime Day is any indicator, Q4 2025 will demand more intentionality than ever. Here’s what smart brands are already doing: • Re-engaging Prime Day traffic using DSP, email, and remarketing • Preparing Q4 campaigns with granular audience segmentation • Leveraging learnings from SBV and Display to fuel full-funnel media • Reevaluating Hero SKUs and bundling strategies for margin protection
In other words, the old brute-force method is dead. Today’s winners are agile operators, fluent in performance data, creative execution, and logistics alignment.
Final Thought
This year’s Prime Day wasn’t about chasing glory — it was about building sustainable advantage. And the brands that treated Amazon not just as a sales platform but as a fully integrated growth engine? They came out ahead.
Konstantin Cherednychenko is an eCommerce and digital marketing expert with 10+ years of experience driving growth for global brands on Amazon and beyond. He’s led campaigns for brands that generated over $400M in revenue, blending data, creativity, and a deep obsession with the digital shelf. Passionate about full-funnel strategy, performance advertising, and marketplace mechanics, he brings sharp insights and real-world tactics to the column each week.
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
