Adobe: online spending across all retailers in the US hit $26.4B during Amazon's four-day Prime Day event, up 9.3% YoY; Walmart and Target also hosted sales
Online spending across all retailers in the US hit $26.4 billion during Amazon.com Inc.'s annual Prime Day sale, according to Adobe Inc. …
Context & Ripple Effects
Adobe’s prior readings show Prime Day functioning as a broader US e-commerce spending event: total online sales were nearly $12B in 2022, $12.7B in 2023, and $14.2B across the 48-hour event in 2024. Amazon also described the 2021 event as its largest two-day period for third-party sellers.
This year’s four-day window coincided with sales from Walmart and Target, making the reported $26.4B a measure of a retail-wide promotional period rather than Amazon activity alone. The 9.3% annual increase indicates spending continued to grow even as the promotion expanded in duration and competitive participation.
First-order effects
- Amazon’s Prime Day now pulls a larger pool of US online spending across a four-day window, while Walmart and Target can capture demand by running overlapping promotions.
- Third-party sellers and retailers participating in the event gain a concentrated demand period, but must compete more directly for promotion-led purchases.
Second-order effects
- Overlapping sales make Prime Day less of a standalone Amazon moment and more of a timing benchmark that other large retailers must address with their own offers.
- As the event broadens, retailers face greater pressure to differentiate on assortment and promotion rather than simply matching the calendar, while Adobe’s aggregate spending data becomes more relevant than Amazon-only results for judging the period.
Third-order effects
- If concurrent promotions remain the norm, major retail sales events may increasingly operate as ecosystem-wide e-commerce demand windows rather than proprietary platform events.
- The key structural question is whether longer, retailer-wide sale periods create incremental online demand or primarily redistribute purchases among Amazon, Walmart, Target, and their sellers; the available data establishes higher aggregate spending but does not resolve that mix.
The trend: Prime Day is evolving from a two-day Amazon promotion into a longer, competitive retail calendar event that concentrates online consumer spending across multiple platforms.