Prime Day 2019: Amazon Advertisers’ Revenue Was Up 5.8X

Prime Day 2019 Executive Summary

• Advertisers spent 3.8X on Prime Day compared to what they spent in July leading up to Prime Day—and generated 5.8X the revenue
• For Day 1 of Prime Day (July 15th), Skai advertisers that participated both years spent 2X what they did in Prime Day 2018
  • Toys & Games spent 6.3X YoY
  • Health & Beauty spent 3.1X YoY
  • Computer & Electronics spent 2X YoY
  • CPG (not known for promotions) spent 1.2X YoY

Prime Day 2019 is over and it was—once again—the biggest in Amazon’s history. 

According to Skai Ecommerce performance data, advertisers spent an average of 3.8X more on the first day of Prime Day (July 15th) versus the average July day leading up to the big event. And it was well worth it as these brands garnered 5.8X the revenue that day versus the average day this month. 

Although the dust is still settling on all of this massive data, the first day (July 15th) is in the books. And here’s what we learned: Across all Skai clients who also advertised during last year’s Prime Day, spend doubled year-over-year (YoY) in 2019. Of course, certain advertiser categories spent more than others to take advantage of the increased conversion activity. Toys & Games brands spent 6.3X more YoY, Health & Beauty brands spent 3.1X more YoY, and Computer & Electronics brands spent 2X more YoY. Even CPG brands—not known for big holiday promotions—spent 1.2X this year versus last year’s Prime Day season.

“We want to thank Prime members all around the world,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO in a press release today about Prime Day 2019. “Members purchased millions of Alexa-enabled devices, received tens of millions of dollars in savings by shopping from Whole Foods Market and bought more than $2 billion of products from independent small and medium-sized businesses. Huge thank you to Amazonians everywhere who made this day possible for customers.”

According to the press release, Amazon said that Prime Day was once again the largest shopping event in its history with more than one million deals exclusively for Prime members. Amazon Prime Day 2019 (July 15th & 16th) surpassed Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined with consumers worldwide purchasing more than 175 million items, from devices to groceries and more, throughout the event.

“This year’s Prime Day event has exceeded our expectations—in fact, one of our clients went out of stock by 11 am on the first day despite stocking up for their promotion,” says Patricio Harrington, Director of Client Advertising at The Stable, a consumer brand agency representing world-class brands across all channels of commerce with clients such as Quip, Ring and Segway. “Amazon Advertising was key in driving tremendous sales lifts on price promoted items, but we also so a holistic sales lift driven by Amazon Advertising on items that were not price promoted.”

Prime Day brings a massive amount of engaged consumers to Amazon who are in a feeding frenzy looking for deals. Last year, even though there were 1 million unique Prime Day deals promoted worldwide, more than 100 million products were purchased. An Amazon study of 2018’s Prime Day for ten major CPG and consumer electronics advertisers showed that they experienced a very high sales increase for their non-promoted products on Prime Day compared to the day before. 

Prime Day 2019 is just another example of Amazon’s savviness

“The Prime Day season was a very strategic and intelligent move by Amazon to create a shopping holiday,” says Harrington, whose other clients include Simplisafe, Cora, WW (formerly Weight Watchers), Homesick Candles, Tommee Tippee, Cariloha and Barstool Sports. “First, the timing is perfect as it comes in the middle of the summer when there aren’t any other big shopping promotions. Also, the entire retail landscape is looking to try to cash in on the momentum with their own tie-in, but because it was named it after the proprietary Prime program, no one else can use the word ‘prime’ without consumers immediately thinking of Amazon.”

What makes Prime Day even more of a strategic win for Amazon is that it uses the event to get more Prime subscribers who generally outspend non-Prime members on the site by two or three times. The company added more new Prime members on July 15 than any previous day and almost as many on July 16—making these the two biggest days ever for member signups. 

Skai Ecommerce is the leading solution for vendors, sellers, and brands to create, manage, forecast and optimize Amazon Advertising campaigns at scale. 600+ retail brands and top agencies use the platform with enterprise-level performance, productivity, and data insights tools needed to drive Amazon program success. 

Note: The analysis represented in this post is based on Skai profiles who spent on Amazon advertising in June/July of both 2018 and 2019 for year-over-year calculations, and all Skai clients spending on Amazon advertising for the 2019-only results.

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