This year’s Prime Day took place from July 11th to July 12th, and made history by achieving an extraordinary $12.7 billion in total sales and setting a remarkable record with the global sale of 375 million items.

One of the biggest Prime Days in recent years, we saw incredible growth across many key metrics like sales, spend, clicks, conversions and more. We’ve identified key trends from this year’s sales event, including assessing hourly performance data to help you better benchmark your performance.

Biggest Prime Day To-Date

Prime Day 2023 sales witnessed an extraordinary surge, soaring by a remarkable 87.5% year-over-year, resulting in an astounding average sales increase of 315%, marking this event as the most largest Prime Day to date. Day 1 particularly stood out, demonstrating strongest performance with a staggering 387% sales increase, indicating shoppers were capitalizing on Prime deals early. While Day 2 followed the expected pattern of lowered performance compared to Day 1, it nonetheless still saw unprecedented performance compared to the previous year's figures in 2022.

Pandemic Level Spending

Prime Day 2023 saw a 277% increase in spending compared to the trailing 14-day average, with a significant year-over-year increase of 53.5%, indicating the most substantial spending growth in several years, with spending levels close to those seen during the pandemic. Unlike previous Prime Days characterized by more cautious shopping habits, Day 1 observed increased impressions and visibility as shoppers diligently scoped out deals before making purchases on Day 2.

A Profitable Prime Day

One of the most remarkable aspects of this year's Prime Day was the significant decrease in Advertising Cost of Sales (ACOS) witnessed on both days, reaching an impressive 14% and 2% reduction, respectively. This reduction in ACOS indicates  that advertisers experienced profitability for the first time in several years.

Clicks and Conversions Held Strong

The dynamics of Prime Day shopping behavior have always been intriguing, with shoppers carefully navigating through deals, leading to increased impressions and clicks but lower click-through rates until a select few finally make a purchase. However, this year's Prime Day brought a noticeable shift in this trend. While we still observed similar patterns across both days, there was a remarkable difference in the conversion rate, with a substantial 23% increase in 2023 compared to the 4% and 9% seen in 2022. This indicates that, even though shoppers remained methodical in their approach, a larger number of them were converting into buyers once they landed on a Product Detail Page.

Category Performance

Many of the top 5 categories remained consistent across both Prime Days, with the difference of Sports & Outdoors on Day 1 with 246% increase in sales, and Health & Household on Day 2 with 181% growth. However, when it came to top sales winners across all of Prime Day, Electronics and Appliances emerged as the clear winners, taking the top two spots.

Electronics Dominated Prime Day

The Electronics category maintained its dominance in sales growth during this year's Prime Day. With an aggressive 392% increase across both Prime Days compared to the 14-day trailing average, it became evident that customers were on the lookout for cutting-edge gadgets and irresistible tech deals. As shoppers tended to splurge on higher-ticket items, Appliances also experienced a notable boost in sales, capturing the attention of consumers.

Hourly Performance

Throughout both Prime Days, we monitored hourly performance to gauge consumer behavior and identify key trends. One of the most intriguing aspects of Prime Day 2023 was the pronounced peaks in website traffic around working hours.

Peak Traffic around Working Hours

We saw peak traffic during two specific time slots: 7-10 am PST and 5-7 pm PST. These hours saw peak traffic in terms of impressions and clicks, indicating that shoppers were keen on making purchases early in the day, possibly before heading to work. The data suggests that consumers were eager to seize the best deals on high-ticket items, demonstrating a sense of urgency and excitement to kickstart Prime Day on a high note. On Day 2, however, we observed a slightly different pattern. While peak traffic still occurred in the evening, from 5-8 pm PST, there was less urgency among shoppers to make early-day purchases. Instead, they seemed to wait until after work to capitalize on the post-work deals before the day was done.

Peak Efficiency Windows

Throughout the two days of Prime Day, we closely monitored the performance metrics of CPCs (Cost Per Click) and ACOS to gain valuable insights into the dynamics of advertising costs and profitability. On Day 1, from 5-8 am PST, just before the rush of AM traffic, we observed that CPCs reached their peak while ACOS hit its lowest point, indicating that ads were more expensive but had the potential for greater efficiency. As the day progressed, CPCs gradually dropped, and ACOS started to increase from 5 pm PST onwards, indicating that while bids were cheaper, their return was not as profitable.

On the other hand, Day 2 presented different trends, revealing a decline in both CPCs and ACOS as the day unfolded. Despite an increase in traffic from 5 pm onwards, advertisers found this time window to be more cost-effective and profitable. The decline in CPCs and ACOS implied that advertisers efficiently reached their target audience and generated sales at a lower cost during this period.

Final Thoughts

Prime Day 2023 was an absolute hit, with performance and ratio metrics seeing significant growth over the 14-day trailing average, as well as year-over-year. Electronics category continues to dominate shopping events like Prime with consumers looking to take advantage of deals on high-ticket items. Daily trends have also seen similar performance with Day 1 driving the largest peak in impressions while shoppers take to Amazon to scope out the deals available. Beyond Prime Day, advertisers can expect to see similar growth trends leading into fall peak shopping events like Black Friday Cyber Monday, and the holidays.

Are you set up for success? To take your advertising to the next level, from Prime Day and beyond, reach out to us at hello@perpetua.io.