Amazon's Pre-Holiday Holiday Prime Event Shines

Remember when we had fewer holiday sales? When we had sales that fell on or near actual holidays? Well, those days are gone because now companies think "holiday shopping" means starting well before we're thinking about the holiday in question.


For instance, about a week ago, Amazon began its holiday season push with Prime Big Deal Days (which we'll refer to as PBDD moving forward).

So, what did the eCommerce giant have in store for us that warranted this early foray into the holidays?

The big question: how successful were they in convincing shoppers that now is the time to help them boost their Q4 shopping success with a Prime member sales event in mid-October?

To begin with, vendors and sellers dropped more money into Amazon Sponsored Products this year than during the Prime Early Access Sale of 2022, with spending rising 25%, attributed to primarily a 21% increase in CPC. The higher cost of ad clicks gelled with the value of those clicks, with the Sponsored Products sales growing 23% (about as much as spend growth).

Brands like dropping ad dollars in Prime member sales events because they offer a huge opportunity to snag those new customers. New customers are always welcome.

The PBDD upped the ante in new-to-brand customer share, with a groovy 65% of Sponsored Brand purchases from those sought-after new-to-brand customers compared to about 61% during the first nine days of October. Even Amazon DSP's new-to-brand purchase increased, jumping from an average of 41% in the first nine days of October to 49%.

Unfortunately, those shares fell short of the July Prime Day event, which saw new-to-brand share hit 70% for Sponsored Brands and 59% for Amazon DSP advertisers. We'll just let Amazon work that little snafu out on its own.

As for the big PBDD, the first day of the event produced a whopping 57% of Sponsored Products sales, with the second day accounting for 43%. No real surprise here because historically, the first day of Amazon Prime events seems to shine, as evidenced by 61% Sponsored Products sales for Prime Day 2023 happening on day one.

Although the numbers tend to dwindle toward the end of these events, there's still a lot of meat on the bone in the middle, so it's a good idea for advertisers to hang in there until the meal has been fully eaten if you get what we mean.

We don't know about you, but we're already looking forward to holiday shopping in 2024.

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