Want to make the most of Prime Day? Read our tips for boosting ad performance
Throughout the lead-up to Prime Day, Prime members engage with Amazon to browse and shop for products across multiple product categories. This highly anticipated and trafficked event is a time when you, as an advertiser, can make your brand and deals discoverable to shoppers. Prime Day 2021 was the biggest two-day period ever for Amazon’s third-party sellers, nearly all of which are small and medium-sized businesses, and members purchased more than 250 million items worldwide1. See how our Prime Day offerings can help your brand.
Actions to take
Before Prime Day
The lead-up to a high-traffic event may sometimes be just as important as the event itself. Ensure you are building brand awareness by leveraging static and video creative for new-to-brand customers prior to Prime Day. Shoppers are using this time to discover brands, research, and compare products—engage them as they shop by featuring product deals and your top sellers in both your ad creative and Store. Finally, optimize product detail pages to drive engagement and product readiness for Prime Day itself. Understand ad policies to avoid creative rejections during the different phases of the event.
1. Take note of static and video creative best practices to build awareness pre-event.
- For static creative, focus on clarity and getting your brand messaging across. The brand logo should be visible to encourage recall and affinity while imagery used should be clear and either product or lifestyle focused. It’s best to keep the product as identifiable as possible as well—will shoppers immediately be able to tell what’s being advertised when seeing the creative? Finally, copy should be simple and concise, focusing on the unique features of the product or brand while headlines should communicate a strong statement that provokes an action. Visit the creative insights repository for more audience-specific static image insights.
- To optimize Amazon DSP online video (OLV) creative before Prime Day, introduce your brand early on, especially if you’re including speech—as delaying speech in a video by one second can decrease DPVR by 22%.2 Next, consider having a logo on the creative throughout to trigger recognition and create relevance later on. Visit the OLV guide for more Amazon DSP OLV insights.
2. Featuring a deal within your creative can boost engagement with your products before Prime Day
See below for an example of creative showcasing savings messaging:
Awareness based messaging
Savings messaging
3. Optimize your Product Detail Pages (PDPs) before Prime Day to drive further conversions
PDP best practices:
- Create a strong product title.
- Feature four or more high-quality, zoomable images.
- Include at least three bullet points on your product detail page regarding item specifications.
- Ensure your products are in stock and deal-ready leading up to and on event date.
Learn more techniques to optimize your product detail pages here.
4. Pay attention to Prime Day creative and ad policy during your setup
Understanding common blockers will help support your Prime Day setup and creative optimization opportunities. Implementing these best practices ahead of time will help to achieve your campaign objectives and avoid creative rejections during the event itself.
Prime Day mentioning policy (applicable for all ad products)
Remember that Prime Day messaging can’t be included in copy if ads are running on-site. If running off-site, Prime Day messaging will be allowed only if you have an official Prime Day deal linking back to Amazon. However, the Prime Day logo can never be used.
Policy per ad type:
Amazon DSP off-site | Prime Day mentions are permitted in Amazon DSP off-site, provided the advertiser has an official Prime Day deal linking back to Amazon. |
Amazon DSP on-site | Prime Day mentions are not permitted. |
Stores | Prime Day mentions are not permitted. |
Self-Service | Prime Day mentions are not permitted. |
The top 5 most common blockers for Prime Day creative
1. Price deal mismatch
- Issue: The price or savings included on the creative is not found on the landing page.
- Guideline: All prices or savings must be in the same format as the creative and easy to find on the landing page. Either the creative or landing page will need to be adjusted if this is not the case.
2. Product deal mismatch
- Issue: The product version or image included on the creative does not match the product on the landing page.
- Guideline: The product type and version included on the creative must be shown on and match what is present on the landing page. Either the creative or landing page will need to be adjusted.
3. Prime Day violation
- Issue: Prime Day messaging is included in copy of ads running on-site.
- Guideline: If running off-site, Prime Day messaging will be allowed only if you have an official Prime Day deal linking back to Amazon. However, the Prime Day logo can never be used. Review the requirements above and adjust your creative to Prime Day best practices.
4. Restricted product violation
- Issue: The product advertised is restricted and therefore has required audience and placement restrictions that have not been adhered to for this creative.
- Guideline: Review the requirements and amend audiences and placements for this creative.
5. REC ad headline violation
- Issue: The custom headline must be grammatically correct and cannot contain a price or deal.
- Guideline: Headline will need to be adjusted based on these requirements.
During Prime Day
On Prime Day itself, optimize your ad placements by featuring top selling products and deal items through responsive e-commerce creative (REC). Finally, optimize your Stores experience by highlighting deal products prominently in your Stores home page.
1. Optimize your executions for click-through and engagement on big event dates by:
Enhancing product legibility by selecting high-quality, larger-sized product snapshots that make it immediately clear for customers what’s being promoted. Single-product creative should feature simple and neat composition, as well as product snapshots rather than lifestyle imagery. Writing simple, readable copy will also help to clarify promoted products.
Lifestyle focused
Product focused
Including sharp, vivid visual elements will help your creative pop up. For example, color product images, logos designed on colored frames, and high background-to-foreground contrast could make creative more noticeable.
Low contrast
High contrast
Favor brand recognizability by displaying a distinct logo that is familiar to customers. Brands can also be mentioned in the ad copy; however, make sure to avoid redundancy and use well-balanced composition.
Without logo
With logo
2. During the event, promote your top deals and products through responsive e-commerce creative (REC), which have the following five benefits:
1. Multiple products
Auto-generates ads with up to 20 associated ASINs and auto-optimizes by picking the best performing ones.
2. Out-of-stock awareness
Automatically skips rendering of products while they are out-of-stock until they come back in stock. If all products are out-of-stock, it needs to be manually paused.
3. Responsive auto-resize
Reduces the average time spent building creative by 90% and efficiently allows automatic creation across 10 sizes.
4. Deals-enabled
Automatically pulls products’ prices and information from detail pages and displays associated deals badges (including a Prime Day badge) for selected deal types.
5. Conversion focus
Drives users to product detail pages or lets them add products to cart, enabling a two-click purchase experience.
Additionally, Prime Day badges will be available on REC ads with approved deal types during the event. Discount messaging will also be dynamic and update automatically if the deal changes.
e-commerce ad with Prime Day deal badge and percentage savings message
e-commerce ad with Prime Day deal badge and shop now button
3. Ensure your Store is ready for Prime Day
The top 5 things to consider for your Store during Prime Day
Make sure your Store’s Prime Day promotional messaging adheres to ad policy
In your brand’s Store, promotional messaging is only permitted when used with the Featured Deals Store widget.
Stores Featured Deals Widget
Ensure that Prime Day is not referenced in any creative headers. Instead, it should read “Save on… [brand or category].” Below you can find promotional copy that is approved for the event:
Allowed | Not allowed |
---|---|
Explore our Savings/ Discounts | “Today Only,” “Hurry” or other additions intended to create urgency or promote a limited time restriction |
Great Savings/ Discounts | Numerical pricing references (i.e. 20% off or save $10) |
See our Savings/ Discounts | References to “Amazon Deals" or "Prime Day” |
[Brand Name] or [Product Name] Savings/ Discounts | Exclamation points unless they are part of a brand name |
Correctly set up your Store layout
When driving creative with deals messaging to a Store, the Store or page must be appropriately titled if created exclusively to promote deals. For example, “sale”, “discounts,” “deals” or other terms that imply a promotion. “Prime Day” cannot be used in the tab name. It should also contain the Featured Deals Widget (FDW) as the first product selection tile on the page.
Approved Stores layout for Prime Day: Featured Deals Widget on top, text banner in the middle, Product Grid at the bottom
Header
- Promotional messaging is only permitted here when used with the Featured Deals Widget below.
Featured Deals Widget (FDW)
- Must appear immediately under the header with no other elements in between.
- Use “curated set of products” mode to show products featured in your display creative in the first position.
Banner to separate deal widget section from other sections within the tab
- Any additional section besides FDW must be clearly separated to avoid confusion.
- The copy of this banner cannot use the world “offer” as it would be misleading for customers.
Product Grid
- Including a product grid in the tab is also useful to ensure you will always have products in your tab in case there are no active deals displayed in the FDW.
- The Stores page must make clear to customers that the products on the Product Grid are not on deal and must be clearly separated by a text tile from those that are on deal (FWD). The text must indicate the following products are not deals and use general messaging to describe the product selection. See the existing policy surrounding Product Grids here.
Product Grid
The Featured Deals Widget (FDW) must be used for all deals
The FDW will show products with active promotions (Subscribe & Save included). Make sure to use a curated product list when adding the ASINs to the FDW, paying attention to the following:
- ASINs featured in the creative MUST be entered first.
- The ASINs will appear in the order as entered.
- At least four ASINs need to be added to activate the FDW.
- The widget will only show ASINs if they are deals.
- The products will automatically appear in the title for as long as the promotions last. When a promotion ends or products go out of stock, they will be removed automatically.
Store builder with Featured Deals Widget and mandatory feature for 'curated set of ad products'
Choose a launch date for a new or existing Store without cancelling the original through scheduling
New Stores or versions should be scheduled according to ad creative launch times. The publish date and time of a Store can be selected when submitting to publish and must be at least 72 hours prior to launch to allow for review and approval of the Store. Stores must also be scheduled for the duration of the promotion period.
Scheduling feature in Store builder
Versioning feature in Store builder
Stores considerations for multi-brand advertisers
Multi-brand advertisers who lead with multi-brand deals in Store creative, such as “Shop our skincare deals,” may create a Stores deals page that contains product category image tiles with text. For example, it could say “Shop [brand x] for her deals,” or “Shop [brand x] for him deals” as the first component on the Store page above the FDW. The titles must click through to the correct corresponding deal pages within the same Store. Arriving from the Store creative, the deals page must also contain the FDW with full selection of deals for customers who wish to continue exploring and shopping for products on that page.
After Prime Day (2+ weeks):
Shopping habits during high traffic events don’t end abruptly—ensure your brand is present even after Prime Day by remarketing featured products to re-engage audiences who browsed or viewed your products during the event but didn’t end up purchasing. You can also reach audiences that continue to visit Amazon by promoting complementary products to existing or new audiences. Next, engage with your new and existing customers by promoting complementary products through further campaigns post-event. Finally, review your Prime Day performance and identify your top-selling products to better understand audience engagement for future events.
1 Amazon press release, 2021
2 Amazon internal, March 2021, US