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Amazon's Prime Day Ad Spend Shifts From Discounts to Video
Media buyers tell Digiday that client spending on Amazon Ads ahead of Prime Big Deal Days (Oct. 6-7) is up 15-40% year over year, with growth concentrated in Amazon's DSP and video inventory rather than sponsored product listings.
By Roomer Editorial · · 4 min read
How much is Amazon ad spend growing ahead of Prime Day?
Five media buyers told Digiday that client spend on Amazon Ads is up 15-40% compared with last year, heading into this week's Prime Big Deal Days. Wpromote's Darren D'Altorio put endemic growth (brands that sell through Amazon) at 30% year on year, and non-endemic growth at 40%. He expects both to keep climbing into 2027.
Not everyone sees the same pace. Wpromote's Katie Davis said this year's growth is running at a more conservative 15-20%, down from 40-50% in prior years, pointing to economic headwinds and the fact that Amazon and other retailers now run near-constant promotions. PMG's Ryan Walker estimated growth in the 15-20% range as well.
Amazon's own numbers back up the scale of the shift: Q2 ad revenue hit $19.8 billion, up 26% year on year.
Where is the new spend going?
Into Amazon's DSP (demand-side platform, the system marketers use to buy ads across Amazon-owned inventory), and specifically into video. Davis said budgets are moving up the funnel into CTV (connected TV) and online video, at the expense of sponsored product ads, driven by better measurement of incremental returns.
Ashley Hutchings of KSM Media said spend is moving into Amazon-owned inventory including Twitch, Prime Video, and sports, with marketers diversifying DSP buys toward what she called proprietary, high-quality inventory.
Non-endemic brands — those that don't sell on Amazon but want its audience data — are leaning into Prime Video and streaming audio. Tinuiti's Joe O'Connor called Prime Video a "gateway" for non-endemic clients testing Amazon for the first time. Endemic brands, by contrast, are sticking closer to Amazon's search and display inventory. Tinuiti clients are set to grow Amazon spend roughly 15% year on year, with DSP spend specifically up 25-30%.
Is the FTC investigation into Amazon's ad auctions slowing demand?
No, according to the buyers. Markacy co-founder Tucker Matheson said the FTC's probe into Amazon's ad auction practices has had "no impact" on client behavior. Tinuiti's O'Connor summed up the mood: clients keep investing because the channel performs.
Are discounts getting smaller?
Yes. PMG found average discount depth fell from 28% in 2024 to 24% last year, as brands absorbed tariff and supply-chain cost pressure. PMG expects discounts under 20% to become more common this year.
That shift is changing how brands plan around Prime Day. Rather than pulling back, buyers say marketers are spreading spend across the run-up to the event instead of concentrating it on the promotional days themselves. Exverus's Hillary Bram said clients are now weighing Amazon's overall efficacy as a channel, not just the return on a single sale event.
Some buyers pointed to the earlier June Prime Day, which ran two days instead of 2025's four, as a signal that pushed brands to recalibrate ahead of the Black Friday and Cyber Monday peak. PMG separately estimated that July's Prime Big Deal Days brought in sales equal to 3% of annual Amazon U.S. sales, about 57% of what last year's longer event generated.
Roomer Editorial's take
None of this is about travel. But the pattern is worth noticing if you run a travel brand or build content for one.
Amazon's advertisers are pulling money away from blanket discounting and putting it into owned, measurable video inventory — Prime Video, Twitch, CTV — because it performs better than a coupon code. The CFO logic D'Altorio described, that spend tied to real audience data and proximity to purchase is easier to justify, applies just as well to a travel brand deciding whether to fund another flash sale or fund a creator's video content instead.
Travel brands have run the same discount treadmill as Amazon sellers — rate drops, flash sales, affiliate codes that erode margin without building anything that lasts. The buyers quoted here are describing a slow pivot away from that toward content and video that a brand actually owns and can measure.
Roomer Editorial's view: travel creators should read that as validation, not distraction. A booking page built around your own video, where you keep 100% of the commission, is the structural opposite of a discount-chasing affiliate link. It's an asset, not a one-time promo.
If you're a travel creator sitting on hotel or destination video right now, don't just drop it into an affiliate link during the next sale cycle. Put it on a page you control and can point bookings through directly.
Roomer Editorial's view: the lesson from Amazon's shift applies at smaller scale too. If you're testing booking rails through Vio, Stay22, GetYourGuide, Viator or Klook, treat the data you get back as the thing worth building around, not just the commission on a single booking. A creator who tracks which destination videos actually convert can keep making more of what works, instead of guessing at the next discount push.
Source: Digiday
