Amazon Prime Day 2024: Record Revenue, Innovations and Competition

“Amazon’s biggest Prime Day shopping event ever” – that was the press release headline with the stats to back it up. In its 10th year, Prime Day notched up its strongest growth rate since the height of COVID in 2020, fueled by steeper deal discounts, peaking up to 10% higher than 2023, according to Adobe Analytics. (The emphasis was firmly on % discount rather than $ off – somewhat controversial, because Amazon calculates savings based on MSRP/list, not the regular selling price.). Our VML Commerce team had eyes across the world, tracking the sales, trends and key themes represented across the global marketplace.

Firstly, it’s important not toforget the origins of Prime Day as a membership recruitment drive, with Amazon reporting that a “record-breaking number of customers signed up for Prime in the three weeks leading up to Prime Day, with millions of new members worldwide”.

Today, Prime Day has become the unofficial start of the shopping season, leading into Back-to-School and the holidays. This year, the competition took a clear swing at the dollars on the table by staging their own events – including traditional retailers like Walmart and Target, social players such as TikTok and new marketplaces like Temu. Walmart pulled out all the stops with a 50% off offer on its own membership program – Walmart+.

10 Key Statistics – US*

Record revenue $14.2 billion -+11% YoY vs $12.7bn 2023 (UK £1.3bn, +8.8% YoY)
Growth +11.7% YoY Day 1, +10.4% Day 2
Deeper discounts at 22% on average (+10% Y.o.Y)
Mobile devices 49.2% of online purchases
Average order $58 (up from $54 2023), average household spend $152.3
Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) 7.6% of orders (+16.4% YoY)
Social channels #2 traffic driver (behind display)
Back-to-school items +216% & Electronics sales +61%
Top-selling products Amazon Fire TV stick, Premier Protein Shakes, Liquid I.V. Packets
Competitors also benefited – Temu “biggest ever week”, TikTok +50% on baseline sales with “Deals For You Days”, Walmart +23% on baseline sales with Walmart Deals days

Sources: Adobe Analytics, Numerator, Route, Salesforce
*The most in-depth reporting came from North America, which after all represents 61.4% of Amazon’s global business

5 Key Themes – US and Global

#1 Prime Day is Increasingly a Social Event

Social is becoming one of the most important elements of Prime Day (and commerce generally). In the US, social was Prime Day’s #2 traffic driver (behind display) and Amazon made good use of its own Inspire platform as well as leveraging social influencers and micro influencers, especially on TikTok. Celebs like Jess Sims, Alyssa McKay and Millie Bobby Brown dropped daily deals on their favorite products leading up to Prime Day, and affiliates posted their own recommendations. Social is where the shoppers are – particularly younger demos. Emarketer reported that 74% of US Gen Z’s use TikTok for search, and 51% favor it over Google.

#2 Amazon Boosts Own Brands & Expands Non-Endemic Products

Unsurprisingly, Amazon used Prime Day to spruik its own products – focusing on Amazon Basics, Amazon Essentials and Amazon Devices like Echo, Kindle and Ring. No wonder the Amazon Fire TV stick was the #1 item sold on Prime Day in the US! (Side note: electronics generally performed strongly, with consumers seemingly in a “product refresh cycle”.) Of more interest, Amazon continued its focus on “non-endemics” – items and categories that are not normally sold on the platform. That started last year with Amazon’s pioneering partnership with travel site Priceline, and in 2024 travel deals expanded and other categories crept in. In the UK, Prime Members could secure a year of food delivery service Deliveroo Plus for free (normally £3.49 per month, saving £41.88 annually).

#3 AI Features (But A Not-So-Smooth Experience)

Amazon’s cutely named Rufus (an AI-based “expert shopping assistant”), had a role to play in Prime Day in the US. Trained on Amazon’s product catalogue and information from across the web, it was positioned as a Prime Day shopping concierge to help customers overcome choice overload. But when we put Rufus through its paces, it didn’t perform to its full force. Shopping for sunscreen, Rufus confidently presented its answer for the best product, but when prompted whether that item was on sale for Prime Day, Rufus suddenly introduced other random deals. As JP Morgan analysts note, enhanced digital shelf experience is projected to be the singular largest driver of growth on digital commerce in 2025, with AI widely regarded as the critical disruptor to turbocharge its acceleration. But there’s still education and training to be had. While the future remains bright for AI, radical transformation in the quality of data interpretation will see new shopping tools powered by AI evolve drastically to ensure they meet their intended purpose -- to boost sales, improve the customer experience, and with greater personalization, But in the case of Rufus’ debut, it may be time to go back to school and get studying.

#4 A More Personalized Prime Day

Relevance gets results, so Amazon put even more emphasis on deals “for you”. A more personalized approach included serving up Prime Day offers on products that consumers had previously engaged with on the site. 56% of respondents in Numerator’s Prime Day Verified Buyer Survey indicated they had bought “items (they’ve) been waiting to purchase on sale”. Potential purchasers actively flagged their interest in items via deal-alert notifications, a feature used by 40% of US Prime members.

#5 Competitors Joined the Prime Day Party

Amazon has effectively re-set the retail calendar with its Prime Day event in the middle of a Northern hemisphere Summer, and competitors now jump on the bandwagon. Walmart got out early on July 8 with Walmart Deals (and even earlier access for Plus members), and Target went head-to-head with Amazon over the two-day event, Circle Week. TikTok joined the fray with “Deals For You Days”. But the player Amazon would have been watching closely was discount marketplace Temu. The Chinese company launched Temu Week, its “Biggest Sale of the Season” with up to 90% off. In answer to Temu, Amazon is setting up a dedicated section on its site, with low-priced items shipped directly from China - the trade-off being slower delivery times than Prime.

Thank you to all our contributors: Jon Bird, Leah Sallen, Alex Brandsetter, Ian Bryson, Alex Dubowitz, Megan Pinto, Jeremy Rew.

Here to Help On Amazon, Marketplaces and More

Prime Day has kicked off the shopping season, but there are months to go and VML can assist in fine-tuning your plans. Our Amazon Center of Excellence can help with analysis and optimization, and we have specialists in all marketplaces and social platforms across the world. For more information on Prime Day and digital commerce generally, contact James Galland.