The ‘Dog Days’ of Amazon Prime Day Advertising

Though it was temporarily sidelined by some otherwise adorable dogs, Amazon Prime Day offered millions of Americans a much-welcomed break from the recent hot snap by providing an oasis of cool deals and a few thrilling moments of holiday-like shopping frenzy. Meanwhile, brand advertisers across the world looked to cash in on Prime Day’s 36-hour window of enormous opportunity to grow their sales exponentially from the droves of shoppers hungry for midsummer discounts.

At the end of the (Prime) day, many brands came out wagging their tails … but even more advertisers went home with their tails between their legs. More often than not, the difference came down to how nimbly they executed their campaigns in Prime Day’s lightning-quick timeframe.

As digital advertising technology platform Kenshoo confirmed with hundreds of brands shortly after Prime Day concluded, success meant having all-hands-on-deck to deliver holiday season results in the height of summer.

Luckily, many brands reported being well prepared to execute in crunch time, and their initial sales numbers support their statements. In fact, early, unofficial reports show some 25 percent overall sales growth from last year.

Looking at these top sales winners, we also gained insights other brands can leverage next year before they become (pardon the pun) past their prime:

• Average daily budgets more than doubled across the board, seeing record daily highs for our advertiser index. One well-known consumer electronics brand spent eight times its average monthly spend in each day of the event.
• Average cost per click increased by 24 percent, as notable competition on key terms sent the auction into a frenzy.
• Brands invested in sales velocity and were willing to sacrifice margins to capture the opportunity at hand — yet conversion rates remained steady.

The net-net: total daily sales for the most successful brands nearly quadrupled (3.75X) on Prime Day.

Why did these brands fare so well? Deep insights into retail and advertising activity, coupled with efficiency in execution played a major role given the tight 36-hour timeline for impact. In our discussions with some of the most successful Prime Day advertisers, insights and automation emerged as a key theme. For example, one leading brand said the following, “The ability to identify successful products, assess potential budget issues and run multiple automated actions with the data was key to our execution success.”

The value of detailed campaign and product insights coupled with automation in optimizing enterprise search programs on Amazon is made abundantly clear when viewed through the lens of a Prime Day event. The complexity of a broad catalog or a stable of brands within a large CPG seller on any given day of the year requires constant vigilance and a heavy dose of automation, optimization and reporting insights just to stay afloat. Add to that the fury and fierce competition of the very few major shopping events each year — Prime Day, Black Friday, Cyber Monday — and these capabilities can make or break your brand and market share.

Whether Prime Day was a smashing success for your brand or left you in the doghouse, campaign automation, combined with rapid-fire execution, will have you covered next time around. The best part? With the right tools and planning in place, you can stop and shop a little, too. That Instant Pot has your name on it.

Oren Stern is general manager, e-commerce solutions at Kenshoo.