Prime Day 2025, Unpacked: 4 Days, 4 Experts - Episode 401

🎙️Prime Day Data Breakdown With the Acadia Team

DESCRIPTION

Welcome to The Ecommerce Braintrust podcast, brought to you by Julie Spear, Head of Retail Marketplace Services, and Jordan Ripley, Director of Retail Operations.

Amazon has made it official: this year’s Prime Day was the biggest one yet. We’re recording this episode on the afternoon of Monday, July 14th, just 48 hours after the event wrapped, and we’re excited to dig into the early insights.

And just as Amazon has extended Prime Day into a four-day marathon, we’re expanding our post-event panel with four sharp minds to help us unpack what really happened last week.

Joining us today are:

• Covering the operations side of things, a familiar voice on this podcast and contributor to The Retail Roundup, Armin Alispahic.

• Bringing the account strategy perspective: Senior Account Manager, Gavin Farnan

• And rounding it out on the media side, we have not one but two experts: Senior Media Managers Damiano Ciarrocchi and  Rhen McLeod.

The data is just starting to settle, but that’s not stopping us from diving into some early hot takes and insights. Tune in to find out more!

“I don’t think that the shopper demand necessarily weakened throughout the event, as the data shows, but the budget may have simply started to run out.”

Damiano Ciarrocchi

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

In this episode, the team discusses:

• Prime Day Purchases & AI Features: The panel kicks off by sharing what they bought during Prime Day and their experiences with Amazon’s new AI shopping assistant, Rufus, highlighting its value for mood-based, “vibe shopping” and customer review summaries.

• Prime Day Performance Data: An in-depth look at sales distribution across the new four-day format, including how revenue lifts compared to past events.

• Operational Insights & Promo Strategies: Discussion on how the elongated event affected promotion pacing, ad budget allocation, and the shopper response to an extended sale window, along with the impact on category performance.

• Technical Performance & Glitches: A notably smooth Amazon ad and promo experience this year. No major outages or surprises, plus some minor issues with inventory caps and VC account eligibility.

• Advancement in Amazon Advertising Tools: The group explores cutting-edge ad features, especially the rollout of AMC (Amazon Marketing Cloud) audiences for sponsored product ads, offering more precise results tracking and targeting.

• Organic & Operational Adjustments: Implications for inventory capacity, stricter Amazon requirements, creative price strategies by brands, and shifting promo tactics to manage margin pressure and secure Prime Day badging.

• Post-Prime Day Lead-Out Strategies: Key recommendations for capturing post-event demand via retargeting, subscribe & save coupons, and utilizing new promo types to leverage traffic from Prime Day.

• Preparing for an AI-Driven Future: The episode wraps up with a forward-looking discussion on the rising role of agentic AI in online shopping, recommended optimizations for both paid and organic to better capture traffic from conversational and personalized shopping queries.