The highs and lows of October Prime Day 2025, and how to prepare for Black Friday Weekend
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Prime Big Deal Days, aka ‘October Prime Day’, has just come and gone, heralding the start of the busiest quarter of the year for the retail sector.
For Amazon shoppers, this is the first big push to start Christmas shopping. But a combination of factors – including tighter budgets, and smaller discounts – mean it wasn’t quite the sales bonanza Amazon might have hoped for.
In fact, compared to last year’s October Prime Day, it was a fairly low-impact event: but still worth being involved in, and with lessons to take forward to the Black Friday weekend.
Here’s how October Prime Day 2025 compared to others, what it means for Amazon sellers, and how you can apply its learnings to the rest of 2025Q4.
About Prime Big Deal Days
This was the fourth ‘Fall Prime Day’: the first was launched in 2022 as the Prime Early Access Sale, with 100 million items sold. That event built on the success Amazon had garnered with its Covid-delayed Prime Day in October 2020.
October 2023’s event was even bigger, with 150 million items sold, according to Amazon; followed by the 2024 event, which was the ‘biggest ever’.
This year, Amazon put together themed deal collections for the two-day event, including ‘Cosy Season’ and ‘Gifting’, to entice shoppers to get into the fall spirit.
Some of the best deals were on homeware and apparel: the last one an interesting category, as Amazon still straggles behind other retailers for fashion. These deals included big names, such as 35% off Levi’s jeans, and 50% off Crocs.
However, this year’s event couldn’t beat the previous October Prime Days, with initial figures, including from e-Comas, confirming rumours that performance was down.
Forbes reports that a lot of shoppers prioritised practical essentials, blaming economic uncertainty, inflation, tariffs, and consumer caution for lower satisfaction and average order sizes.
As for brands, profitability was too important to slash prices: Acadia reports that margin protection was prioritised over blanket discounting, with promotions focused on best-sellers, and spend aligned with long-term ROI.
Comparing to July’s Prime Day
This year’s Prime Day in July was a four-day event, which means it was the biggest ever Prime Day.
Seeing how the October Prime Day compares to the July event is interesting. Figures from Numerator show that only 61% of July Prime Day shoppers returned for the October event, despite it being heavily advertised and 90% of shoppers being aware of it ahead of time.
Satisfaction with the sales on offer also slipped: 66% were ‘extremely’ or ‘very’ satisfied in July, down to 58% in October.
As with the July Prime Day, Amazon faced heavy competition from other retailers, like Walmart and Target. Live tracking by Numerator found that a majority (55%) of shoppers compared products against competing retailers, and weren’t compelled enough by the Amazon discounts to buy.
Also in common with July’s event, the October Prime Day’s big sales were in the ‘essentials’ bracket: clothing and shoes, household, and cosmetics.
We’d expect more ‘gift’ categories to be big-hitters, but only 23% of shoppers used October Prime Days to start Christmas shopping, compared to 45% last year, according to the National Retail Federation.
Comparing to last year’s October Prime Day
Overall, based on e-Comas’s clients, the impact of this year’s October Prime Day event was significantly less than that of 2024, particularly for Sellers opposed to Vendors.
Last year, Seller Central revenue for the event was up 245.3% over the previous four weeks’ daily average, compared to 45.6% this year.
In Vendor Central, it was significantly higher: up 145.4% this year, compared to 232.3% last year.
e-Comas successes
For e-Comas, most of our clients achieved modest success with October Prime Day – or as one of the e-Comets put it: “Good numbers, but overall lower demand compared to July Prime Day.”
A kids’ brand we work with doubled their sales on the first day, while a client in the hydration sector achieved three times the sales of the week before: “A nice boost to end the back-to-school season.”
Typical for our clients was a pets brand that achieved solid growth of 83% year-on-year, as well as 35% week-on-week; and a men’s hygiene brand that achieved 149% year-on-year, and 26.5% week-on-week.
We found the second day slower than the first across the board, and overall, lower demand compared to the July Prime Day.
Despite the drop, all our clients saw moderate success, which highlights how brands can benefit in a tough economic climate from agency help.
Plan now for Black Friday weekend
Will the lower numbers for October Prime Day equate to more shoppers for the Black Friday weekend? Or is October Prime Day a bellwether for consumer behaviour this holiday season? It’s hard to say.
But it’s safe to assume that consumers will be looking for big discounts by then: ensure you can convert them by making your prices attractive.
We’ve seen how the last two Prime Day events, even though they’re Amazon-specific, have faced stiff competition from the likes of Walmart and Target.
On Black Friday Weekend there’s even more competition: make sure you check your discounts are holding up against your competitors and across platforms, and the cheapest prices are landing where you want them.
If your margins won’t allow big discounts, it’s more important than ever that you use Amazon Marketing Cloud: it allows you to fine-tune your advertising campaigns for more precise targeting and re-targeting, helping your budget go further.
Use lead-in advertising to capture interest early, and lead-out discounts to capitalise on the higher volume of traffic for less spend.
The Black Friday Weekend usually represents much higher traffic, lower down in the funnel. If you want to make the most of these spend-ready shoppers, ask us: we’re experts, and we’re always happy to help.