This year, Amazon experienced a record-breaking Prime Day as promotion-focused customers snapped up deals across markets on the 12-13th of July. In this blog, we round up the top call outs for Amazon sellers and vendors, including headline insights and a dive into this year’s changing trends.
Prime Day 2022 at a glance
While we were able to gather a number of interesting insights from this year’s Prime Day, here are some of the key stats and trends we observed from the shopping event:
- 300 million items were sold globally this year versus the 250 million that were sold during Prime Day 2021. That’s +40% year-over-year (YoY) growth.
- Amazon Sellers’ +11.7% YoY Prime Day revenue growth outstripped Amazon’s own products (+6.1%), and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) won big.
- The top performing categories were household, health & beauty and electronics.
- Brands leveraged Amazon Advertising with ad spend up 36% YoY, as revenue and orders increased.
Shoppers are still choosing Amazon in light of the worsening economic backdrop.
Amazon Prime Day 2022
With Amazon Prime Day out-performing analysts’ expectations this year, this makes 2022 the ‘biggest ever Prime Day’, securing its eighth consecutive year of growth since its inception. Prime members worldwide saved over $1.7 billion USD – more than any other Prime Day.
This year Prime Day was offered in Austria, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, the U.K., the U.S, and, for the first time, Poland and Sweden.
Changing trends
As economic concerns worsen and inflation continues to bite, we’ve seen a marked shift in consumer shopping habits, presenting opportunities for brands as demand pivots. Practical essentials were the new best sellers this Prime Day as everyday essentials were prioritised over big ticket luxuries. Household became a top selling category, representing 29% of all orders, followed by health & beauty and electronics.
Across the industry a number of interesting trends have been noted:
- The top categories consumers purchased from were household essentials (32%), health & beauty (28%) and electronics (27%).
- Ad spend for the health and household categories increased by 192% (versus 82% in 2021), and cost-per-clicks (CPCs) grew by 46% (versus 25% in 2021) as brands spotted new opportunities.
- Amazon grocery sellers increased ad spend (+107%) over Prime Day week-on-week (WoW), with CPCs increasing 41% as the category grows.
- 27% of all customers surveyed reported buying everyday essentials they’d be purchasing anyway, more than the 20% who purchased higher priced items.
Changing trends are set to continue as customers increasingly look to Amazon for everyday needs. This is seen in the strong performance of the household and health & beauty categories, but also in the grocery category where further growth is expected.
This represents a significant opportunity for fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) brands to bolster their Amazon presence and double down on Amazon as a consistent direct-to-consumer route to market. This year, Amazon demonstrated that the platform’s demand continues to grow even as economic conditions change, providing resilience for brands ahead of a challenging third and fourth quarter. These trends were reflective across markets including the UK and US.
The standout winners of Prime Day 2022 were small- and medium-sized businesses, who form the majority of Amazon sellers. Backed by Amazon initiatives such the ‘Small Business Badge’ and ‘Support Small Businesses To Win Big’ sweepstakes, SME’s drove an additional $3 billion revenue across more than 100 million small businesses during the three week lead into Prime Day.
Amazon Advertising
More brands recognised the importance of Amazon Advertising this Prime Day, with ad spend increasing across campaign types. This translated to a more competitive period with CPCs up between 13% and 15% YoY in many categories, enabling some brands to drive a 3x increase in sales versus typical non-Prime Day averages.
Here are some quick snapshots from Amazon Advertising:
- YoY Prime Day ad spend grew +36%
- Brands selling on Amazon saw ad attributed sales up 334%
Participating brands saw conversions rise up 320% WoW, whilst average sales per campaign doubled. Versus last year, conversions per brand were quite static (-8%).
Prime Day with Croud
The majority of demand and trading took place during the first of the two days, in line with previous years. As always, Prime Day produced mixed results for some advertisers depending on their approach. For those that participated with strong offers and promotions we saw some fantastic results. One of our brands drove a 5x ad revenue uplift through during the two day event. Not only that, they also pushed great visibility and engagement from their upper funnel and conquesting campaigns. Prime Day presents a great opportunity to get in front of lots of potential new to brand shoppers even if they don’t convert during the event. This is where lead out tactics and remarketing can come to the fore…
Prime Day: Next steps
Although Prime Day performance was strong, there is further opportunity to take advantage of the momentum and data you’ve gathered during the event. Implementing repeat and cross-sell retargeting tactics can help brands continue to benefit from the uplift in visibility from those new-to-brand browsers and first time purchasers. Done correctly, the benefits of Prime Day last well beyond the event itself for savvy advertisers.
Summary
Amazon Prime Day 2022 was a record-breaking success with strong sales performance across markets. Price sensitive shoppers spent and ordered more as they turned to Amazon for value, which could drive a continued loyalty as economic conditions worsen.
Evolving shopping behaviour has created an opportunity for FMCG brands to take advantage of the rise in demand for everyday essentials – particularly household and beauty.
And finally, brands have discovered that Amazon Advertising is more important than ever, with spend and ad orders up YoY, and a greater variety of campaign types being used. With advertising increasing, brands need to have a calculated advertising strategy both during, and outside of promotional events to ensure they cut through the competition and share their brand’s unique selling point with their customers.
To learn more about key Prime Day trends, or to discuss ways to maximise your Amazon marketing strategy, please get in touch with our team.
