Once a definitive moment in digital retail—capable of delivering up to 40% of annual revenue for some—Amazon’s Prime Day has undergone a massive shift this year.
The shift started from the moment the sale was announced. Amazon extended this year’s event to four days and pulled it forward by a week compared to 2024. On paper, this flexibility should’ve created new opportunities. In practice, we suspect it introduced some consumer fatigue and new competition. Walmart, Target, and Nordstrom ran overlapping sales, dividing consumer attention. Internally, our Rithum teams noted that clients approached the week less with anticipation and more with obligation. Many of the sales had to be submitted right as tariffs news was creating unease, and The Super Bowl energy of past years was gone. In its place: calculated caution and high alert about ways to pivot quickly if performance underdelivered.
And that caution was smart. Prime Day 2025 didn’t deliver the kind of breakout performance of years past. But it wasn’t a failure either. It was a recalibration, and a sign of things to come. Below are five strategic lessons from 2025’s Prime Day Event that ecommerce marketers, operations leaders, and retail media strategists should carry into the rest of the year’s tentpole sales.
Lesson 1. Prime Day isn’t the Super Bowl anymore. It’s the preseason.
In prior years, Prime Day was trusted to provide 20–40% of annual GMV for some brands and retailers. This year, it functioned more as a seasonal trigger than a standalone sales boom. With the event extended to four days and moved a week earlier than in 2024, many shoppers (and sellers) approached it differently.
The urgency that once defined Prime Day was diluted. Instead of seeing it as an isolated event, many of our clients repositioned it as the kickoff to back-to-school and Q3 seasonal cycles. For some, that meant liquidating summer inventory. For others, it was a way to test demand signals, creative strategy, or pricing elasticity ahead of Labor Day and holiday seasons.
Takeaway: In a crowded promotional landscape—including overlapping events from Walmart, Target, and Nordstrom—Prime Day and its competing sales events are now a starting point, not a finish line.
Lesson 2. Spend was up, but conversions were down. Agility mattered.
Across retail marketplaces, Rithum performance teams reported a common pattern: ad spend increased (especially for the extension of sale in days from 2 to 4), but conversion rates lagged. This wasn’t a media execution problem, rather, it reflected more cautious, inflation-conscious consumer behavior. Although GMV overall was down across the first three days of Prime, GMV jumped +38% YoY on day four. Our takeaway? Shoppers built carts early, browsed across platforms, and often delayed purchases until the last day. They were comparing and pricing for the best value and delaying until they knew they’d get what they needed, for the price they wanted.
At Rithum, our teams worked with clients on a daily basis to track the conversion activity of the consumer to make informed decisions of ad budget. This could not be a spread spend like peanut butter across 4 days type of approach. Each day brought unique activity for each client, and we had to be extremely agile to navigate the environment to still bring in revenue and GMV wins.
Takeaway: This shift forced many to move beyond lower funnel paid search services. We helped many teams pivot to mid-funnel and audience-driven tactics, including DSP and visual advertising tools, which delivered better engagement in an environment where urgency was absent. Our clients that succeeded treated every day of the four-day event differently, allocating budget based on actual conditions, not pre-set plans.
Lesson 3. Essential products outperformed, even without heavy promotions
One of the clearest signals from this year’s event was the strong performance of household consumables, even without Prime Day badges or deep discounts. According to one Prime Day tracker, household products accounted for 29% of purchases, and 51% of shoppers purchased something they’d been waiting to buy until it went on sale. We saw this across our data, as well: Zep, a household cleaning supplier client of ours, saw steady sales throughout Prime Day(s) due to consistent shopper demand for cleaning and maintenance goods. These items outpaced discretionary categories such as apparel and beauty, where GMV was down 10-20% across the sales.
Takeaway: This shift emphasizes a move toward needs-based shopping and margin-conscious purchasing. In many cases, consumers weren’t chasing deals—they were using Prime Day to stock up on items they normally get in-person or at grocery stores. It’s another reminder that ecommerce channel management must account for inventory prioritization and margin forecasting—not just promotional planning.
Lesson 4. Gen Z Is changing the rules of retail engagement
Gen Z, now the largest behavioral shopping cohort in the U.S., is not buying into urgency-driven sales tactics the way previous generations did. This group expects authenticity, sustainability, and transparency from brands and tends to favor first-party channels, DTC brands, or retailers that match their values.
What this means for future Prime Days and similar events: discounting alone won’t win. Success requires upper-funnel engagement, differentiated brand stories, and multichannel awareness. Brands that leaned on algorithm-driven promotion or last-click attribution this year likely missed a sizable portion of Gen Z shoppers. Building trust now requires authentic storytelling, not just sale banners.
Takeaway: Enhancing PDPs with lifestyle content, sustainability claims, or social narrative going forward is a key opportunity for reaching this demographic. Creator aligned promos using Rithum’s TikTok shop integration, for example, along with transparent pricing and fulfillment options during a time of economic uncertainty, will all resonate loudly with this influential buying group.
Lesson 5. Strategy beat scale. Platform readiness is key.
Not all missed performance was due to consumer behavior. This year, some brands hesitated to participate because of tariff-related uncertainty around the time Amazon required Prime Day deal submissions. Others faced technical or operational hurdles around deal eligibility, badging, or shipping compliance. These platform-level shifts meant that participation wasn’t just optional—it was conditional on preparedness.
Takeaway: This is where ecommerce order management and real-time marketplace intelligence mattered. Rithum clients leveraged dynamic spend control, algorithmic forecasting, and feed management tools to reallocate efforts mid-event—shifting between brand marketplaces, social commerce platforms like TikTok, and more stable categories. That flexibility allowed teams to protect margin while capturing engagement in a fractured retail landscape.
Prime Day has evolved. Have you?
Prime Day 2025 served as a clear tipping point. Consumer spending and shopping have changed, and instead of anticipating patterns, it’s more important to align spend with actual market behavior, adapt to consumer signals in real time, and leverage tools to remain agile across retail media, marketplaces, and direct channels.
Whether you’re optimizing product feed management, refining your advertising tools, or preparing for peak season performance, now is the time to reframe events like Prime Day as catalysts for smarter, multi-channel success. Post-prime day is the time to evaluate your feed health and listing accuracy ahead of H2/Q4 selling, review your operations to improve real-time performance shifts, and use these lessons to get ready for Q4 promotional layering around Black Friday, Cyber Week, and other big events.
Reach out here—we can help.
Tom Quilty is Senior Manager, Technical Account Management at Rithum.
