Expect a boom in mobile activity on Prime Day this year

Amazon’s blockbuster Prime Day promotions are officially confirmed for June 21 & 22. Other top brands and retailers will be launching their own deals, and much of the activity will be through mobile. Consumers are expected to spend a combined one billion hours that week on their phones, according to mobile data and analytics provider App Annie.

Prime Day is Amazon’s largest sales event, eclipsing Black Friday and Cyber Monday. App Annie anticipates a 25% increase in time spent on mobile during this year’s promotions. The payoff is big for other brands if they time their deals around Prime Day. It can especially prove to be successful for newcomers that don’t have the clout of Amazon. 

Last year, China-based fashion brand SHEIN became the fourth most downloaded app in the US during Prime Day, beating out Nike and Target during the same time. It still wasn’t a bad showing for Nike and Target, though, as they showed, respectively, 75% and 20% week-over-week download growth.

Here’s a look at the increase in time spent in shopping apps before and during the pandemic, which makes a compelling argument for why marketers in retail should take another look at their mobile presence. Even after Prime Week 2020, you’ll see that mobile use remained considerably higher than 2019.

Why we care. Prime Day, and the days before and after, are a bonanza for e-commerce. What’s more, it encourages traditional brick-and-mortars to up their digital game. Last year during the pandemic, everybody was buying online for obvious reasons. We even saw in the B2B space that consumers wanted to buy directly from distributors, forcing some companies to unexpectedly overhaul their e-commerce system. Marketers are closely watching how much buying consumers are doing and where, especially through mobile devices. As the world opens back up, this means they will be able to engage customers even more through cross-channel real-world experiences, including by using digital out-of-home.

About The Author

Chris Wood

Chris Wood draws on over 15 years of reporting experience as a B2B editor and journalist. At DMN, he served as associate editor, offering original analysis on the evolving marketing tech landscape. He has interviewed leaders in tech and policy, from Canva CEO Melanie Perkins, to former Cisco CEO John Chambers, and Vivek Kundra, appointed by Barack Obama as the country's first federal CIO. He is especially interested in how new technologies, including voice and blockchain, are disrupting the marketing world as we know it. In 2019, he moderated a panel on "innovation theater" at Fintech Inn, in Vilnius. In addition to his marketing-focused reporting in industry trades like Robotics Trends, Modern Brewery Age and AdNation News, Wood has also written for KIRKUS, and contributes fiction, criticism and poetry to several leading book blogs. He studied English at Fairfield University, and was born in Springfield, Massachusetts. He lives in New York.