Prime Day is the single biggest traffic spike most Amazon sellers will see all year outside of Black Friday — and it behaves nothing like a normal sales day. Click volume surges, cost-per-click inflates across almost every keyword, and shoppers who would never have found you organically are suddenly scrolling past your listing at speed. Sellers who treat Prime Day like “a normal week with a bit more budget” either run out of money by lunchtime on day one, or sit on flat bids while competitors buy up every impression.
At StoreStride we run Prime Day PPC for private label sellers across Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Display every year. This guide is the exact framework we use: what to do in the six weeks before, the two days during, and the week after.
Prime Day is two events, not one. Amazon now runs the headline two-day Prime Day event in summer and a second Prime Day-style event in October. The PPC mechanics below apply to both — adjust the dates, not the strategy.
Why Prime Day Breaks Normal PPC Logic
Three things change simultaneously during Prime Day, and each one affects your account differently:
- Traffic volume multiplies — often 5–10× normal daily sessions for participating categories, concentrated into 48 hours.
- Competitor bids spike across the board — everyone is fighting for the same inflated traffic, which pushes CPCs up even on keywords you have owned cheaply all year.
- Amazon's own algorithm weights deal-badge and Lightning Deal listings — organic and sponsored placements both favour products running an active promotion, so your ad spend works harder when it is paired with a deal.
The result: a fixed daily budget that performed well in June will likely be exhausted within the first few hours of Prime Day if you don't actively manage it, and bids that were efficient last week will underperform on the day itself. This isn't a "set it and walk away" event.
The Prime Day PPC Timeline: Three Phases
Phase 1: 6–4 Weeks Before
Deal submission, inventory checks, listing readiness, keyword research refresh, and building the campaign structure you'll switch into.
Phase 2: Prime Day (48hrs)
Active, hands-on bid and budget management. Dayparting by hour. Real-time monitoring of out-of-stock risk and budget pacing.
Phase 3: The Week After
Wind-down of inflated bids, harvesting new search term data, and handling the post-event sales and ACOS normalisation.
Phase 1: Preparation (6–4 Weeks Out)
Most Prime Day PPC failures are decided before the event even starts. Work through this checklist in order:
Confirm Inventory Can Support the Spike
Run your FBA forecast against a 5–10× demand multiplier for your Prime Day SKUs. An out-of-stock listing mid-event doesn't just lose sales — it also tanks the ranking gains the event would otherwise deliver, and any ad spend already directed at that ASIN is wasted the moment it goes unavailable.
Submit Deals Early
Lightning Deals and Prime Exclusive Discounts for Prime Day have submission deadlines weeks in advance and limited slots per category. A listing with an active deal badge consistently outperforms the same listing running ads alone — pair every PPC push with a deal wherever your margin allows.
Refresh Your Keyword Research
Pull your latest Search Term Report and Brand Analytics data. Shopping behaviour shifts during Prime Day — broader, more generic search terms spike as new-to-category shoppers browse deals. Build out a layer of broad and phrase match around these generic terms that you wouldn't normally prioritise.
Build a Dedicated Prime Day Campaign Structure
Duplicate your top-performing Sponsored Products campaigns into a separate "Prime Day" copy with its own budget and naming convention. This keeps your event-specific bid and budget changes isolated from your always-on campaigns, and makes the week-after wind-down far simpler — you pause or archive the Prime Day copies rather than untangling bid history on your core campaigns.
Raise Daily Budgets — and Know Your Ceiling
Model your expected spend using last year's Prime Day CPC uplift (typically 20–40% above baseline) multiplied by your target impression share. Set daily budgets at this level across Sponsored Products, Sponsored Display, and Sponsored Brands, but agree an absolute spend ceiling in advance so nobody is making that call live on the day.
Prepare Sponsored Brands & Video Creative
Prime Day is the highest-traffic moment to run Sponsored Brand video and headline search ads pointing to a dedicated Prime Day storefront page or multi-product creative. Get creative approved at least two weeks ahead — Amazon's review queue slows down as the event approaches.
Phase 2: During Prime Day — Hour-by-Hour Management
This is not a "launch and leave" 48 hours. Here is how we manage live accounts during the event itself:
Bid Strategy
Raise bids on proven, high-converting keywords and ASINs by 15–30% for the duration of the event — you want to win the auction on terms you already know convert, even at a higher CPC, because Prime Day conversion rates on those terms are typically higher too. Hold or lower bids on exploratory, low-converting keywords; this is not the moment to be testing unproven search terms at inflated CPCs.
Dayparting
Prime Day traffic is not evenly distributed across the 48 hours. Historically, the opening hours of Day 1 and the final hours of Day 2 see the sharpest spikes as shoppers check in at the start and rush before the deadline. If you use dayparting or a rules-based bidding tool, schedule bid increases to align with these peaks rather than running a flat uplift across the full 48 hours.
Budget Pacing
Check budget utilisation every few hours, not once a day. A campaign that exhausts its budget by mid-morning on Day 1 misses the Day 1 evening peak entirely. If a high-performing campaign is pacing to run out early, raise the daily budget mid-day rather than letting it go dark — a paused campaign loses its placement history and takes time to recover once re-enabled.
Watch inventory in real time, not just budget. A SKU that sells through faster than forecast can go out of stock mid-event. The moment stock hits zero, pause ads pointing at that ASIN immediately — continuing to pay for clicks on an unavailable listing is pure waste, and Amazon will still charge you for the click.
Monitor ACOS Expectations, Not Just the Number
Your ACOS will very likely rise during Prime Day compared to a normal week — CPCs are higher, and you are intentionally bidding more aggressively to capture volume. This is expected and, within the ceiling you set in Phase 1, generally the right trade: Prime Day sales carry velocity benefits (organic rank lift, review volume, repeat purchase from new customers) that a same-ACOS sale in a normal week doesn't deliver. Judge the event on total profitable units moved and post-event ranking, not on hitting your everyday ACOS target.
Phase 3: The Week After Prime Day
The event doesn't end when the deals do — the week after is where a lot of agencies and in-house teams lose the gains they just paid for.
Common Prime Day PPC Mistakes
- Leaving daily budgets at normal levels. The single most common and most costly error — campaigns go dark during the biggest traffic hours of the year.
- Running ads without a deal attached. Ads alone compete on CPC; ads plus an active deal badge compete on CPC and get preferential placement weighting.
- Not isolating Prime Day bid changes from core campaigns. Makes the wind-down messy and risks permanently inflated bids bleeding into normal trading weeks.
- Treating both days identically. Day 1 opening hours and Day 2 closing hours are not the same traffic pattern as the quieter middle stretch — flat bidding across all 48 hours over- or under-bids at different points.
- Panicking at the ACOS number mid-event. Pulling bids down because ACOS looks high on Day 1 morning often means missing the Day 1 evening and Day 2 peaks that would have brought the blended number back down.
- No inventory buffer check. Winning the PPC battle only to go out of stock on Day 2 afternoon wastes the ad spend already committed and the organic lift already earned.
Want a Prime Day-ready account?
StoreStride builds and manages Prime Day PPC strategy end-to-end — campaign structure, budget pacing, dayparting, and the week-after wind-down — for private label sellers on Amazon UK and globally. Get in touch before the next event.
Get Free Amazon PPC Audit →Common Questions About Prime Day PPC
How much more should I budget for Prime Day PPC?
Most categories see CPC uplift of 20–40% versus baseline, combined with 5–10× the normal traffic volume for participating SKUs. Model your Prime Day budget as a multiple of your normal daily spend adjusted for both factors, then set a hard ceiling you're comfortable defending even if ACOS runs higher than usual for the two days.
Should every ASIN run ads during Prime Day?
No. Prioritise ASINs that have an active deal (Lightning Deal or Prime Exclusive Discount), sufficient inventory to handle the spike, and a proven conversion history. Spreading Prime Day budget thinly across your full catalogue dilutes impact on the SKUs that can actually benefit from the event.
Does Prime Day performance affect my organic ranking afterward?
Yes, generally positively. A concentrated sales and review velocity spike during Prime Day typically produces a short-to-medium-term organic ranking lift in the weeks that follow, which is part of why judging the event purely on in-event ACOS understates its real value.
What about the second Prime Day-style event in October?
The same framework applies. Treat it as a smaller-scale version of the summer event — slightly lower traffic multipliers in most categories, but the same preparation, hour-by-hour management, and wind-down discipline.