How Did Amazon Spin This Year's Prime Day Sales? (fortune.com) 28
"Amazon stretched out its annual Prime Day sales event so that it lasted four days — twice as long as in the past — and, as a result, blew away previous sales figures," reports USA Today:
Spending for [the four-day] Prime Day amounted to "more than two Black Fridays — which drove $10.8 billion in online spending during the 2024 holiday shopping season — and sets a new benchmark for the summer shopping season," Adobe said in a news release. The total also surpassed Adobe's pre-Prime Day estimate of $23.8 billion in sales.
But an article in Fortune notes that "what stood out to this longtime Amazon watcher is that the company didn't disclose anything about the number of items sold." The last time it made that choice was 2020, when nothing normal was happening anywhere in the world, and Prime Day was moved from summer to October. Before that, you have to go back to the second-ever Prime Day in 2016 to find a wrap-up that didn't provide any update on the number of "units" sold.
It's unclear exactly why Amazon decided to withhold that number for 2025, but this Prime Day was odd for a few reasons. Sellers, and brands big and small, had to come up with different strategies to contend with tariff chaos. And they're trying to woo increasingly pessimistic consumers. Those factors could be weighing on the company's decision to withhold exact numbers.
Instead Amazon's official Prime Day recap swapped in some unusual alternate statistics. For example, Amazon reported that if you added up all the discounts given to customers over the four-day event, it was larger than any previous total amount of all discounts given to customers (over the earlier two-day events). To be sure, it's possible that this Prime Day was a success. An outside analysis from Adobe estimated that sales across online retailers overall increased by more than 30% during this year's four day Prime Day period, compared to last year. And Amazon said in this year's recap that the four days of Prime Day 2025 outsold any other four-day period that included previous Prime Days. But historically, the event hasn't run longer than two days. That means that previous years have included two prime days and two regular days, while this year included four prime days. It's unclear why the company would change the basis of comparison.
Amazon "declined to comment on the absence of specific product sales tallies for 2025," according to the article (while pointing Fortune instead to an Amazon blog post with facts about past Prime Day events.)
But in a sign of the time, Amazon's announcement notes that their Prime Day customers found deals and other product information using Amazon's AI-generated buying guides, as well as an AI-powered shopping assistant named Rufus and Alexa+ — Amazon's next-generation personal assistant ("now available in Early Access to millions of customers").
Another interesting statistic? USA Today notes that "a majority of shoppers (53.2%) made purchases on mobile devices, compared to on desktop computers, accounting for $12.8 billion of the spending, according to Adobe."
But an article in Fortune notes that "what stood out to this longtime Amazon watcher is that the company didn't disclose anything about the number of items sold." The last time it made that choice was 2020, when nothing normal was happening anywhere in the world, and Prime Day was moved from summer to October. Before that, you have to go back to the second-ever Prime Day in 2016 to find a wrap-up that didn't provide any update on the number of "units" sold.
It's unclear exactly why Amazon decided to withhold that number for 2025, but this Prime Day was odd for a few reasons. Sellers, and brands big and small, had to come up with different strategies to contend with tariff chaos. And they're trying to woo increasingly pessimistic consumers. Those factors could be weighing on the company's decision to withhold exact numbers.
Instead Amazon's official Prime Day recap swapped in some unusual alternate statistics. For example, Amazon reported that if you added up all the discounts given to customers over the four-day event, it was larger than any previous total amount of all discounts given to customers (over the earlier two-day events). To be sure, it's possible that this Prime Day was a success. An outside analysis from Adobe estimated that sales across online retailers overall increased by more than 30% during this year's four day Prime Day period, compared to last year. And Amazon said in this year's recap that the four days of Prime Day 2025 outsold any other four-day period that included previous Prime Days. But historically, the event hasn't run longer than two days. That means that previous years have included two prime days and two regular days, while this year included four prime days. It's unclear why the company would change the basis of comparison.
Amazon "declined to comment on the absence of specific product sales tallies for 2025," according to the article (while pointing Fortune instead to an Amazon blog post with facts about past Prime Day events.)
But in a sign of the time, Amazon's announcement notes that their Prime Day customers found deals and other product information using Amazon's AI-generated buying guides, as well as an AI-powered shopping assistant named Rufus and Alexa+ — Amazon's next-generation personal assistant ("now available in Early Access to millions of customers").
Another interesting statistic? USA Today notes that "a majority of shoppers (53.2%) made purchases on mobile devices, compared to on desktop computers, accounting for $12.8 billion of the spending, according to Adobe."
All is well (Score:2)
Really sucked (Score:2)
Absolutely nothing for me to push me to pull the trigger... and I was in a mood for retail therapy.
Prime Day just doesn't make much sense, to me at least.
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Yeah, that was me (Score:2)
I got a $500 discount on some storage batteries and one silly $20 electronic toy that's normally $40.
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Yeah, this is me as well. If there's something big I want to buy that's not particularly time-sensitive and is likely to be an Amazon purchase, I'll just hold off until Prime Days and see if it gets marked down.
- In 2024, this was a Jackery battery (our older Yeti 1000 had given up the ghost).
- In 2025, this was a TP-Link mesh wifi system (we'd been chugging along with an old Airport Extreme for 12-13 years - still worked, but lately it's needed to get power-cycled somewhat more frequently).
What I'm (mostly
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Directly tied to an old saying: (Score:3)
There's Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics.
Love it (Score:2)
"We asked Amazon to tell us what (and why) they chose to not include certain information in their press release, and they declined to answer..." (Shocking, almost like they intentionally chose not to include that information!)
Sounds like a perfect Slashdot story, it's on something no one cares about (units sold? Really?) and because it involves Amazon it's an open invitation to all Slashdot commenters (let's face it, very few even bother to read The Fine Summary before commenting, so we can't call them read
Who cares anymore? (Score:5, Informative)
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It's just the same garbage sold under various names where it is impossible to ascertain if there is a sale at all.
It's possible. Just do an image search on aliexpress.
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A muscle massage gun that I previously ordered was listed as 20% off. I looked up my order and I had paid only 30 cents more than the sale price. I don't think I bought mine on a sale.
They just marked up the price 20% and then put on a 20% discount.
Amazon Day and Black Friday sales are all fake. That's my impression.
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It depends. Big sellers, big names, yes, it's fake. Many Black Friday deals aren't closeouts or overstocks - but specially manufactured models meant exclusively to have a "door crasher". They're just cut down and stripped models meant to look like common bestseller models but custom made for the sale to make money.
However, that's where you should skip the big stores and go to your mom and pop store where those sales literally are clearing
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It's a fake sale. Stuff isn't really discounted, it's usually cheaper at other times of the year.
Amazon is just a showroom for AliExpress now anyway. Unless it's something quite expensive or heavy, it's usually best to cut out the middle man and just order it from China.
Judge Smails-Bezos (Score:2)
(Judge) ”Smashed last years numbers. A new league record.”
(Reality) ”Well, yeah. You technically ran it twice as long.”
(Judge) ”Yes. Yes. Winter rules.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Prime 2 days 2025 = $21 billion - a big loss (Score:2)
The way this is going, 2025 Black Friday and Cyber Monday are going to be horrific.
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Ugh (Score:2)
How can anyone "shop" on Amazon, especially with a ridiculous small phone screen? I stopped using Amazon because it's so stupidly hard to find any real value on the site, and the "search" features laughably horrible. It's nothing but a Chinese trash pit as far as I'm concerned.
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and monitor the price maybe for weeks or months
Track prices automatically with camelcamelcamel.com and get notified when it hits your target.
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It's a website. You can use a computer to shop.
Why are you searching for cheap Chinese stuff? If you don't want Chinese stuff then just search for name brand products.
The only difference between shopping at amazon versus a local store, is that Amazon shows you 100 different Chinese options while your local shop has just 1 Chinese option. And it's usually more expensive or the same price.
Bad timing (Score:2)
People had already bought 'stuff' in anticipation of tarriff-inflation, and AMZ didn't promote the event as 'the last chance to get in before the tarriffs'.
Ads since Christmas (Score:2)
I've seen ads for Prime Day since Christmas. Almost seems like Amazon maybe isn't as healthy as they seem.
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I've seen ads for Prime Day since Christmas. Almost seems like Amazon maybe isn't as healthy as they seem.
No one really is, but a market economy primarily reliant on rampant consumer spending will never admit that.
Hell, that might cause a crash before the next planned crash. No bueno.
I must have missed something important (Score:2)
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The article mentions Adobe making prediction for the prime day sales. Is this the Adobe, maker of Photoshop? I've never been aware of an Adobe involved in the retail business.
You don't even need to click the link in the summary, just hover over it to answer your own question.
Short memo from math department... (Score:3)
Just lies (Score:1)
Sheeple believing the lies, paying for Bezos' rocket fuel.
prime day. (Score:2)