To help brands make the most of Amazon Prime Day, which runs from June 23 to June 26 this year, AI-powered marketing solutions company Measured analyzed 90 U.S. brands last year to determine the criteria for the best media spend strategies. The results were eye-opening and counter-intuitive.
The Measured Media Guide for Prime Day 2026 report found that Amazon’s event has evolved beyond a 48-hour window into a longer period, exemplified by its record four-day duration in 2025. Facing the choice to pull back, maintain or aggressively increase their e-commerce media spend outside of Amazon, marketers saw vastly different outcomes based on their decisions.
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The data showed that holding e-commerce media spend flat at normal levels during the Prime Day window was the only strategy that resulted in revenue growth.
Specifically, the 19 percent of brands that kept their spend steady achieved a 26 percent increase in average daily revenue. Conversely, the 67 percent of brands that pulled back spend to protect efficiency saw a 22 percent drop in revenue.
But here’s the twist: The 14 percent of brands that aggressively increased spend experienced a 12 percent decline.
This highlights that reactive adjustments underperformed, and capturing direct conversions on a brand’s own site remains highly valuable since a media dollar spent there is five to six times more efficient than one driving an Amazon conversion.
To successfully compete for direct conversions during the 2026 window, the report’s authors recommend that brands focus on creating urgency and closing the friction gap with Amazon. Brands can build urgency by running concurrent site-exclusive sales with hard end dates, offering unique perks like exclusive bundles or gifts and retargeting individuals who visited the site or abandoned carts in the preceding 30 days.
To match Amazon’s seamless checkout experience, brands should lower or remove free-shipping thresholds, prominently display return policies, and enable quick-payment options such as Apple Pay, Google Pay and Shop Pay.
Additionally, brands need to focus on owning the customer relationship to secure long-term value from these direct interactions. Using the checkout process to collect email and SMS opt-ins allows brands to gather first-party data that Amazon does not share.
Companies can also implement loyalty points for direct purchases to incentivize future visits and invest heavily in post-purchase elements like specialized packaging, inserts, and follow-up messaging to drive subsequent orders. Ultimately, the primary takeaway for 2026 is to hold spend flat, evaluate success based on incremental revenue rather than pure efficiency, and be prepared to capture direct conversions.
