Prime Big Deal Days Pushed U.S. Online Spend Near $10B

U.S. online spending neared $10 billion during Amazon's Prime Big Deal Days, the retailer's two-day discount event held ahead of the holiday shopping rush.

The figure signals that the October sale has become a major shopping moment in its own right. Amazon positioned the event as an early kickoff to holiday buying, and consumers responded by hunting for bargains and discounts in volume.

The spending did not stay contained within Amazon's own storefront. The event drove sales at multiple stores, including Walmart, as rival retailers captured demand from bargain hunters who were already in a buying mood.

What does the event mean for competing retailers?

Amazon's discount days now function as a rising tide for e-commerce broadly. When Amazon floods the market with deals, shoppers comparison-shop across retailers, and competitors such as Walmart pick up sales they did not have to generate with their own tentpole moment.

For marketers, that changes the calculus around October promotions. A competitor's event can pull a retailer's own sales forward or lift them outright — a dynamic that traditionally belonged to Black Friday and Cyber Monday alone.

The near-$10B result also raises the stakes for the stretch between the event and the December holidays. Consumers who stocked up on discounted goods during Prime Big Deal Days may have checked off part of their gift lists weeks early, which could shift — or concentrate — demand later in the season.

Retailers and brands planning their holiday campaigns will need to account for that earlier spending curve. The event's scale suggests October is no longer a warm-up period but a genuine first wave of holiday commerce, with Amazon setting the date and the rest of the market trading on its traffic.

As retailers digest these results, the question for the fourth quarter is how much of the near-$10B in event-week spending pulled demand forward — and how much of it was incremental holiday budget spent early.