The hottest summer shopping event of the year is officially over and—once again—brands invested heavily in Retail Media advertising to ensure visibility of their products and boost sales.
The data is still settling in, but here are the numbers from Day 1 in terms of Retail Media advertising spending:
- up 3.7X compared to the daily average of June
- up 44% over [Day 1 of] Prime Day 2020
- up 20% over Black Friday 2020
- up 34% over Cyber Monday 2020
The majority of the Retail Media investments were on Amazon Advertising, but Walmart, Target, Instacart, and other online retailers also experienced an increase in ad spending on their platforms during the two-day event.
Marketers wisely planned for the “halo effect” shopping frenzy that Prime Day has historically generated which stimulates the entire retail market. Brands knew that consumers would be comparing prices and promotions off of Amazon.com and spread their bets around accordingly to take advantage of the opportunity.
The hottest products of Prime Day 2021
Amazon’s press release about the event stated that “more than 250 million items were purchased by Prime members worldwide. Members shopped more and saved more than any other Prime Day, and some of the best-selling categories around the world included electronics and Amazon Devices—plus Prime members already started shopping back-to-school items, purchasing more than 600,000 backpacks, 1 million laptops, 1 million headphones, 240,000 notebooks, 40,000 calculators, and 220,000 Crayola products.”
Amazon also shared the following highlights:
- Best-selling categories worldwide for Prime Day 2021 included tools,
beauty, nutrition, baby care, electronics including Amazon Devices, apparel, and household products. - Top-selling products worldwide for Prime Day 2021 included iRobot Roomba
692 Robot Vacuum, Keurig K-Slim Coffee Maker, Apple Cider Vinegar Gummy Vitamins by Goli Nutrition, and Crest
3D White Professional Effects Whitestrips. - Tens of millions of customers viewed Prime Day product demonstrations and
try-on hauls, heard directly from creators, and more during Amazon Live live streams throughout Prime Day.
You could have predicted which products were going to be hot months ago…
The top-selling products for Prime Day 2021 shouldn’t have been a surprise. Skai’s market intelligence platform shows increased market activity for these items:
- A 50% increase in consumer discussions about Roomba over the past 3 months
- A 450% increase in KOL (key opinion leaders) posts on Keurig over the past month and present in 9.4% in the coffee products available in the market
- A 175% increase in consumer discussions around apple cider vinegar vitamins over the past 12 months and gummies trending upward over the past 2 years.
- Whitestrips rank extremely high in customer satisfaction (80%) with regards to the Affordability/Cost-Effectiveness and (77%) in Glowing & Whitening benefits
Brands should leverage market data before shopping events such as Prime Day to help predict what’s currently trending. Not only does it help marketers better to plan their promotional campaigns and invest in the best areas, but it can help companies stock up or even launch new products based on consumer preferences.
*note – data is taken from Skai advertisers spending in aggregate on Retail Media between June 1st and June 22nd, 2021
