Prime Day event drove over $24B in U.S. e-commerce sales, gen AI traffic was up 3,300%

Prime Day 2025 generated $24.1 billion in U.S. online sales, +30.3% YoY, which is equivalent to two Black Fridays. Paid search accounted for 28.5% share of sales, +5.6% YoY while social media influencers drove 19.9% of sales, +15% YoY.

Key Insight: Despite early clickbait headlines pointing to a slow start, quickly refuted by Amazon, Prime Day 2025 ended up delivering year-over-year growth. And while topline was up, Amazon’s bottom line likely saw an even bigger lift thanks to four full days of elevated CPCs instead of two. Still, the consensus from many analysts and sellers seems to be that four days was unnecessary, and possibly counterproductive. Shopper fatigue likely set in, and ending the event on a Friday night meant many carts were abandoned as people transitioned into their weekends.

From the brand and seller side, burnout was real. Yes, Amazon puts the customer first, but it's worth asking if alienating the brands and sellers who drive so much of the flywheel is truly worth it.

Prime Day 2026: Three days instead of four? We shall see...

Amazon Announcement: Amazon Prime Day 2025 delivers record sales and savings in expanded four-day shopping event

Amazon officially called Prime Day 2025 its “biggest event ever,” breaking internal records across deals, traffic, and item volume sold. The four-day format drove broad engagement across categories like appliances and electronics.

Key Insight: Yawwwwwn. Different year, same fluffy announcements. Though it is interesting to note Ring Doorbells and FireTV sticks, both of which embed shoppers ever deeper into the Prime ecosystem, were the top two selling items.

Amazon UK: You can now get snacks and fresh foods delivered in 15 minutes, thanks to Amazon

Building on fast-delivery trends, Amazon is testing ultra-short delivery, similar to services like Gopuff, to bring convenience items to customers in under 15 minutes. This is part of an industry-wide push into micro-fulfillment.

Key Insight: Europe, and the UK and France in particular, have always been well ahead of the US in terms of click and collect. There was some experimentation with 15 minute delivery in NYC in recent years, but most have been shut down. That said, with AI enabling faster processing times, we can expect reduced delivery times and micro-fulfillment to dominate the next wave of supply chain innovation.

Condé Nast and Hearst strike Amazon AI licensing deals for Rufus

Condé Nast and Hearst have inked deals allowing Amazon to use their editorial content to train and power its AI shopping assistant Rufus.

"Rufus, like other LLM-based assistants, needs licensed, structured, brand-safe content to answer questions like: “What’s the best moisturizer for dry skin?,” or “What should I wear to a summer wedding?”, or perhaps “What are good kitchen gadgets under $50?” Lifestyle publishers can provide this context-rich, evergreen content in a way that generic reviews or scraped data can’t."

Key Insight: AI is replacing search in every way. Even browsers like Chrome are about to feel the heat. But the coming wave of Agentic Shopping can only happen if the underlying data is structured, which isn't the case today. This very innovative deal demonstrates just how far Amazon is thinking ahead to get Rufus to be ever more useful.

Marketplaces drove 40% of e-commerce growth in 2024, according to new report

A report from marketplace and social commerce automation platform Cymbio published on Wednesday found that marketplaces drove more than 40% of total e-commerce growth in 2024. The report, using internal data from Cymbio as well as Capital One and Emarketer, found direct-to-consumer channels drove 25% of e-commerce growth. Cymbio estimates that marketplaces will drive 53% of growth by 2030.  

Key Insight: The article doesn't make the connection to Agentic Shopping but when you consider that AI agents will be searching all marketplaces and DTC sites in seconds, vertical marketplaces have the potential to see a resurgence. I suspect Cymbio's prediction will prove to be understated.