Every July, Amazon delivers one of the largest online shopping experiences of the year with Prime Day. The now four-day ecommerce extravaganza is a massive opportunity for brands, resulting in a high concentration of advertising dollars.  

During Prime Day 2024 (the event’s 10th anniversary), global ad spend was up.

The result? A record-breaking $14.2 billion in revenue, or an 11% annual increase.

As massive as that figure is, Prime Day success doesn’t solely hinge on outspending your competition. Rather, it requires a well-orchestrated campaign that spans weeks before and after the actual event. While most brands focus all their energy on the days of, having a "flash sale" mindset is outdated.  

Our data is clear: To truly maximize returns and customer acquisition, one needs to embrace a broader perspective. Think of it not as “Prime Day,” but as “Prime Time” — a full-cycle strategy encompassing four to six weeks of build-up and follow-through.

What to Expect from Prime Day 2025

If past trends are any indicator, this year’s Prime Day is poised to shatter records yet again. And with Amazon set to launch its most expansive sales event ever — spanning four full days — brands that don’t proactively strategize weeks in advance are likely to miss out on substantial, compounding potential.

As for more specific trends, with mobile accounting for $7 billion (i.e., half) of last year’s revenue, it’s becoming clearer that convenience and immediacy are closely tied to consumer behavior. Furthermore, households spent $152 on average across multiple orders, emphasizing a consumer mindset that’s both prepared and opportunistic.

Given all the above, Prime Day 2025 offers brands an unprecedented opportunity to engage with highly motivated shoppers over a longer period, necessitating a shift from short-term tactics to a comprehensive, long-term strategy.

4–6 Weeks Before Prime Day: Laying the Foundation

Preparation is everything. The month and a half before Prime Day is the time to optimize every facet of your product listings — images, titles, reviews, A+ Content — and especially audit your inventory levels to avoid stockouts.  

Key Tasks:

• Optimize all product listings.

• Ensure adequate FBA (fulfillment by Amazon) inventory is in place.

• Identify high-margin, overstocked, or new products for to focus spending on during the peak period  

2–3 Weeks Before Prime Day: Generate Awareness

Data shows us that savvy consumers are already operating under the mindset that the event is akin to the holiday shopping season. They’re planning, they’re researching, and they’re preparing to pounce on Prime Day.  

82% of shoppers know what they want to purchase on Prime Day, and 61% are actively researching in advance. In fact, only 10% admitted to making impulse purchases on Prime Day.  

In this window, it’s time to move from business preparation to brand-building and product awareness. Start promoting your top products with Sponsored Product campaigns, leverage Sponsored Display and Sponsored Brand alongside Amazon DSP to drive brand awareness, and educate customers on why your brand is worth their attention.  

This is when most shoppers are researching, so it is crucial to make sure you’re part of their shortlist.

Key Tasks:

• Begin promoting key products ahead of the event using Sponsored Product ads, but avoid being too aggressive as conversion rates are still low. Your goal is brand awareness during search at this stage.  

• Build category awareness with Sponsored Display and Sponsored Brand ads. You’re aiming for impressions to drive consideration during their research.

• Focus on enabling product discovery and category education for generic keywords  

• Strengthen brand storefront messaging around Prime Day discounts

Pro Tip: This is an excellent time to leverage the power of Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC). Using AMC’s customer signals, you can create AMC audiences for shoppers that clicked on ads but didn't convert, shoppers that showed high interest but did not convert (cart abandoners, added to Wishlist, and multiple details pages views), and shoppers that converted.  

These are critical audiences to retarget and remarket towards utilizing DSP in the lead up to Prime Day, and especially during the peak period of Prime Day to ensure you’re still on their radar. (Quartile makes this process seamless and removes the requirement of SQL knowledge).  

Prime Day: Activate and Capture

Finally, the madness of Prime Day has commenced.  

63% of shoppers delay their purchase just to score Prime Day deals, and 40% make decisions based on FOMO (fear of missing out). With shoppers in high-conversion mode, it’s time to go full throttle.  

Emphasize the ad placements that benefit the most from concentrated promotion: new product launches, high margin offers, and slow-moving inventory you want to clear.  

On top of your brand-driven strategy, Prime Day is also the time to use aggressive bid modifiers on non-branded keywords to defend against competitors. Your audience is searching, hopefully considering your products from your top-of-the-funnel preparation, and this is your moment to intercept conversions with precision.

Key Tasks:

• Implement promo strategies and monitor them closely.

• Leverage automation to monitor bids and placements in real time across all campaigns to avoid capping out spend too early or missing opportunities  

• Target shoppers showing prior interest with higher bids (see Pro Tip below)  

• Maximize visibility on top-converting search terms and continue top-of-the-funnel motions like Sponsored Brand and Sponsored Display to drive impressions

Pro Tip: Quartile enables you to leverage advanced and hyper-specific AMC-powered audience targeting for Amazon Sponsored Campaigns with intelligent, algorithm-driven bidding to maximize efficiency and reach. That means you can boost the performance of specific Amazon Sponsored Ad campaigns using those precise, high-intent audiences we mentioned earlier.  

This lets you more confidently place more aggressive bid modifiers specifically on non-branded Sponsored Campaigns, to make sure you’re paying more for the clicks you know for sure are coming from these special remarketing audiences.

2–4 Weeks After Prime Day: Extend the Spike

Post-event engagement is perhaps the most underutilized phase — remember; shoppers who didn’t convert are still valuable. Meanwhile, those who did are primed for retargeting and loyalty programs.  

High-traffic shopping events like this generate 2-3x the amount of customer signals per day compared to normal shopping periods. This is a wealth of data to leverage for retargeting.  

By leveraging AMC, build more micro-audiences based on events like ad clickers who didn’t buy, cart abandoners, and first-time converters. Use these to drive follow-up purchases, cross-sells, upsells, and reviews using Sponsored Campaigns — turning Prime Day shoppers into long-term customers.

Key Tasks:

• Retarget non-converters through Amazon DSP to capture missed opportunities.

• Offer loyalty perks or personalized discounts to new buyers.

• Encourage reviews and user-generated content (UGC) to boost social proof.

• Analyze the performance of new products or experimental campaigns now that you’ve gained substantial amounts of customer signals in this short period

The Optimization Point

Amazon advertisers who only focus on the four days of Prime Day are missing the bigger picture. That’s because the most successful brands treat Prime Day as a season, not a moment. They prepare weeks, even months, in advance, engage optimally during the event, and continue building momentum afterward.

So don’t just increase your July ad spend by X amount of days; instead, activate a full-funnel strategy with granular targeting, audience segmentation, and intentional creative.  

If you'd like support strategizing and setting up your Prime Day campaigns or leveraging AMC insights to execute with precision and automation to improve results, reach out for a personalized demo.  

Strategic planning starts now — because Prime Time waits for no one.

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