Prime Day results and what we've learned from them?

 

This year, Prime Day gave us some interesting results to look at. The sales were 45% up from last year and the most popular products were from Electronics and Home categories. In this blog post, we are going to present our Prime Day results and point out what we’ve learned from them.

Prime Day versus The Week Before 

As expected, when the clock showed midnight, people got into the shopping rush and advertising campaigns exploded with conversions. The results show a tremendous increase for every metric during Prime Day in comparison with the week before. 

Our clients wanted to invest more money in ads during Prime Day, so Total Ad Spend went up 104%. This resulted in more sales and a doubled number of Total Order items. Also, Total Revenue from Ads had increased by 77%.

In the infographic below, you can see a detailed overview of the most important advertising metrics which skyrocketed and brought our clients more brand exposure and sales during Prime Day. 

When researching which ad type brought the most revenue, we’ve concluded that almost every ad type had a 50% increase: 

• Sponsored Product campaigns brought the most revenue -  almost double when we compare it to the week before. While optimizing these campaigns we increased the Spend, but the results didn’t quite follow. Why? There were a lot of competitors in the game in certain product niches.   

• Sponsored Display campaigns were an actual surprise. They brought 50% higher revenue and are considered as a great potential for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Our advice is to prepare some high-quality Display ads to get your sales rolling. 

• Sponsored Brands campaigns were the least cost-effective option since they brought only 30% higher revenue. The advice is to pay close attention to the Sponsored Brands campaigns that were problematic. By optimizing them properly you will prepare for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. 

Want to read more about Prime Day strategies? Click on this link to get more useful tips!

Prime Day One versus Prime Day Two 

When we compare the first and the second day in terms of sales, there are some notable differences. On the first day,  brands recorded a significant increase in sales, while on the second day, sales were slightly above average. For some accounts, the first day was better in sales for around 70% than the second day. 

Here, you can see that Total Ad Spend went down on the second day and so did the Total Revenue from ads. This was done strategically since most of our clients wanted to use the first day and show off their one-day deals. 

The best-selling categories on Prime Day 

From a global point of view, these categories had the highest search volume during the 13th and 14th of October: Airpods, Apple Watch, Nintendo Switch, Air Fryer, Laptop, TV, iPad, desk, Halloween decorations, gaming chair, and headphones. This was expected since Prime Day was close to the holiday season and people mostly bought gifts.  

This year, Amazon continued to put its products in the spotlight and that’s why one of the best-selling products was Echo Dot, a smart speaker with Alexa and Fire TV Stick 4k streaming device. 

Our research shows that, besides holiday gifts and electronics, people bought different health, household, and fitness items such as supplements, sportswear, lunch boxes, air compressor, hairbrushes, car care products, etc.  

What we’ve learned?

The best strategy is to prepare your campaigns before Prime Day. Explore which ASINs are on discount, check the Business Reports, and inspect your Prime Day metrics from the previous years. Don’t forget to keep monitor your best-sellers and look over the campaigns on an hourly level to keep your campaigns profitable. The smartest thing you can do is to increase placements, bids, and budget gradually. Those should be raised carefully since the changes are not instantly visible in Seller Central and you can’t be 100% sure what’s going on with PPC sales.

The worst thing you can do is to raise budgets drastically. If you do this, there can be a significant jump in ACoS so the profitability of your campaigns will only go down. So, monitor your best-selling products, and don’t raise budgets on non-profitable campaigns during this time. 

From our experience, auto campaigns have the best results, so be sure to run them and allocate a larger part of the budget towards auto campaigns. Even though you have less control over this campaign, your ads will get more placements and your customers will find you easier.  However, when Prime Day ends, your job is not over. Look over the account for the next few days and manage the budgets to maintain profitability. 

You may have noticed how your results after Prime Day weren’t as you expected them to be, and later on, you realized you had more sales. That’s because of massive data delay on Amazon a week before Prime Day and the following two weeks. So, the best thing to do when you analyze your PPC efforts after events like these is to wait for at least one week before you come to conclusions about Ad Sales. 

Need help with your PPC sales on Black Friday? Book a free audit of your Amazon account and we will help you get the most of your Amazon PPC.