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Introduction
Prime Day and other tent pole events create major opportunities to increase visibility, sales, and new-to-brand customer acquisition. However, they also bring higher competition, rising CPCs, faster budget depletion, and changing shopper behavior before, during, and after the event.
To get the most out of peak shopping periods, advertisers should plan their strategy across three stages:
The Lead-Up — Preparation and awareness
The Peak — Conversions and defense
The Aftermath / Lead-Out — Retention and loyalty
This article outlines recommended advertising strategies for each stage.
Stage 1: The Lead-Up
The lead-up period begins several weeks before the event. Although the event itself may only last a short time, shopper behavior often shifts early as customers begin browsing, comparing products, and planning purchases.
During this stage, CPCs may begin to rise, but competition is usually lower than during the peak event. Use this time to prepare campaigns, build awareness, and strengthen retail readiness.
1. Ensure Retail Readiness
Before increasing traffic to your products, make sure your listings are ready to convert.
Recommended actions:
Audit your product listings
Ensure titles, descriptions, bullet points, and images are clear, accurate, up to date, and compelling.Stock up on inventory
Confirm you have enough inventory for promoted products. Running out of stock can waste ad spend, limit sales, and negatively impact organic ranking.Leverage popular search terms
Review high-volume and relevant search terms where your visibility is low. Add these terms to your listings where appropriate to improve organic ranking and page-one visibility.Create or update your Brand Store
Use your Brand Store to showcase deals and event-specific promotions. Submit updates early to allow enough time for approval.
For more detail on Retail Readiness, please refer to the Help center article here.
2. Schedule Budget and Target ACOS Changes
Planning campaign changes in advance helps you stay competitive without needing to manually adjust campaigns during the event.
Recommended actions:
Schedule daily budget increases before and during the event.
Adjust Target ACOS ahead of peak traffic periods.
Plan to return Target ACOS levels to normal 2–3 days after the event.
This allows you to capture increased demand during the event while helping stabilize performance afterward.
For more information on setting up scheduled changes, please refer to the Help Center article here.
3. Own Top-of-Search Placement
Top-of-search placements are especially valuable during peak events because they offer strong visibility when shopper traffic is high.
Recommended actions:
Increase bids on priority keywords.
Isolate strategic keywords into Keyword Boosts.
Use Top of Search bid placement multipliers to improve visibility.
Expand coverage on unbranded and category keywords to reach new-to-brand shoppers.
If broad category terms become too expensive, shift toward longer-tail keywords.
4. Use Competitor Signals to Inform Bidding
Competitor activity can create opportunities during the lead-up and peak period. For example, if a competitor loses the Buy Box, goes out of stock, or changes pricing, you may be able to capture additional traffic.
Recommended actions:
Monitor competitor ASINs.
Increase bids when competitors weaken, such as when they are out of stock or no longer hold the Buy Box.
Focus on top-performing competitor ASINs.
Use automated rules, where available, to react quickly to market changes.
5. Identify Market Opportunities
Use Prism market intelligence and category insights to prioritize where to invest before the event.
Recommended actions:
Review category trends and demand changes early.
Identify high-growth keywords.
Analyze competitor share, pricing, and visibility.
Look for gaps where your brand can gain visibility.
Use CLTV insights to refine keyword targeting, Top of Search tactics, and budget allocation.
6. Build Early Demand with AMC Audiences
Audience strategies can help warm up shoppers before the event so they are more likely to convert during peak promotions.
Recommended actions:
Build awareness audiences before the event.
Prioritize lookalike audiences based on high-value shoppers, frequent shoppers, past purchasers, or new-to-brand purchasers.
Use search-term lookalike audiences to reach shoppers similar to those searching relevant terms.
Prioritize unbranded manual campaigns to capture new-to-brand demand.
Use available lifetime value reporting to refine audience quality and targeting.
Stage 2: The Peak
The peak event period is when shopper traffic, competition, CPCs, and sales opportunities are highest. During this stage, the priority is to maintain visibility, avoid budget exhaustion, convert high-intent shoppers, and defend your brand.
1. Avoid Going Dark
During events like Prime Day, budgets can deplete faster than usual due to increased traffic and higher CPCs. If campaigns run out of budget, you may miss high-conversion periods later in the day.
Recommended actions:
Monitor campaign spend throughout the day.
Increase budgets for campaigns that are pacing too quickly.
Reallocate budget toward top-performing campaigns.
Ensure priority campaigns remain live during high-conversion hours.
2. Use Hourly Scheduling Strategically
Performance can vary significantly by hour during peak shopping events. Manual scheduling can help you control when and how aggressively campaigns spend.
Recommended actions:
Automated Schedule will be temporarily paused.
Build a dedicated event schedule.
Restrict budget during low-converting hours.
Apply stronger bid multipliers during high-traffic or high-conversion hours.
Prioritize early activation during the first hours of the event to capture demand and support ranking.
3. Convert High-Intent Audiences with AMC
Before the event begins, prepare high-intent audiences so they are ready to activate during the peak.
Recommended actions:
Create consideration audiences, such as:
Search term targeting audiences
Repeat product page viewers
Create conversion audiences, such as:
Add-to-cart shoppers
Wishlist shoppers
Use a 7–14 day lookback window.
Set up audiences at least 48–72 hours before the event to allow for approval.
Retarget shoppers who engaged with your brand in the lead-up period.
Focus DSP retargeting on campaign engagers, upper-funnel ad viewers, cart abandoners, and wishlist users.
4. Defend and Conquer with Sponsored Products and Sponsored Display
Peak events create both brand defense and conquesting opportunities.
Brand Defense
Protect your own branded traffic and product detail pages.
Recommended actions:
Bid on branded keywords.
Target your own ASINs.
Create dedicated brand defense campaigns or goals.
Use Sponsored Display product targeting to protect key product detail pages.
Competitor Targeting
Capture competitor traffic where appropriate.
Recommended actions:
Target competitor ASINs.
Replicate your brand defense structure for competitor conquesting.
Stage 3: The Aftermath / Lead-Out
After the event ends, performance does not immediately return to normal. CPCs may remain elevated, conversion rates may decline, and shoppers may continue looking for late deals.
The goal during this stage is to retain momentum, improve efficiency, and convert event traffic into long-term customer value.
1. Maintain a Reduced Level of Advertising
Do not shut campaigns off immediately after the event. Instead, scale back bids and budgets while maintaining visibility for relevant shoppers.
Recommended actions:
Reduce bids and budgets after the peak.
Lower Target ACOS to control CPCs.
Continue advertising to capture late deal seekers.
Maintain campaigns that are still performing efficiently.
Avoid overspending on low-converting traffic.
2. Retarget High-Value Shoppers
Use the post-event period to re-engage customers who purchased or showed strong intent during the event.
Recommended actions:
Retarget Prime Day buyers, especially new-to-brand customers.
Use cross-sell campaigns to promote complementary products.
Encourage repeat purchases.
Promote Subscribe & Save where relevant.
Target high-value shoppers and frequent shoppers.
Exclude low-intent users, such as cart abandoners who did not convert during the event.
3. Review Performance and Capture Learnings
Post-event analysis is essential for improving future tent pole strategies.
Recommended actions:
Review performance by campaign, keyword, product, and audience.
Identify top drivers of sales, visibility, and efficiency.
Analyze high-performing search terms.
Look for unexpected wins, such as new hero ASINs or strong audience segments.
Compare performance against historical benchmarks.
Use insights to refine targeting, creative, and budget allocation for future events.
Additional Best Practices
Avoid Testing During the Event
Tent pole events are not the best time to experiment with unproven campaigns.
Recommended actions:
Avoid allocating additional budget to test campaigns during the event.
Prioritize historically strong campaigns and goals.
Use proven keywords, audiences, and ASIN targets.
Invest in Strong Creative
During peak events, shoppers are exposed to more ads and competitor messages. Strong creative helps your products stand out.
Recommended actions:
Use clear, compelling ad creative.
Highlight key product benefits.
Communicate promotional value quickly.
Ensure creative aligns with the event and shopper intent.
Use High-Interest Audiences
Amazon prebuilt high-interest audiences can be strong performers during peak periods.
Recommended actions:
Leverage high-interest audiences based on shopping activity.
Prioritize audiences that show strong purchase intent.
Combine audience targeting with strong retail readiness and competitive offers.
Performance Expectations by Stage
