Post-Cyber 5 Check-In: What 2025’s Big Amazon Events Really Delivered for Brands

After months of planning promos, creative, inventory, and ad budgets, the big question is always the same: Did it work?

Looking at 2025’s Prime Day and holiday results, the answer for many Amazon brands is yes—but the wins didn’t always show up where (or when) you’d expect.

On the marketplace level, Prime Day 2025 and Cyber Week posted record-breaking numbers. Adobe estimates U.S. consumers spent $24.1 billion online during Prime Day’s four-day window, a 30.3% increase over 2024 and roughly equivalent to combining Black Friday and Cyber Monday online sales from last year.

For the Thanksgiving–Cyber Monday stretch, Adobe reports U.S. shoppers spent $44.2 billion online, up 7.7% year over year, with a record 202.9 million people shopping across channels. Cyber Week as a whole climbed to $79.6 billion in U.S. online sales, up 5% YoY.

That’s the macro view. Inside our own portfolio of brands managed by Netrush & Sellozo, we saw some clear patterns that line up with those broader trends—and a few surprises that are worth carrying into 2026 planning!

Portfolio Snapshot: How Our Brands Performed

Across our active brands, 2025’s peak events were decidedly stronger than 2024:

• Sales stayed elevated all the way through the weekend, outperforming the first week of the promotional period instead of fading out after the “headline” days.

• Nearly every brand beat last year: all but three brands outperformed their 2024 holiday results.

• Among the biggest movers, two brands saw YoY sales jump ~270% and 141%, and another group of brands clustered around ~55% year-over-year growth.

• Even with a few underperformers (roughly –25% vs. 2024), our overall active portfolio finished up 37% YoY.

  
  

In other words, the rising tide of 2025’s demand did lift most boats—but strategy, promo structure, and product mix still determined how high.

Deal Structures That Actually Moved the Needle

On Amazon, deal mechanics matter just as much as the discount itself.

In our portfolio, two types of deals stood out:

• Prime Exclusive Discounts (PEDs)

  • Delivered a 227% lift over baseline.

  • These deals are increasingly table stakes for participating in big Amazon tentpole events, especially during Prime Day.

• Sale (strike-through) pricing

  • Remained the top-performing deal type, driving a 197% lift over baseline.

  • Despite PEDs technically showing a higher percentage lift, strike-through Sales ultimately outperformed in absolute dollars due to the product mix attached to them (more core hero SKUs and proven bestsellers carried these offers).

This mirrors what we saw on the broader marketplace. Analyses of Prime Day 2025 show that brands leaned into sharp, visible discounts, and that discounts often deepened as the event progressed, helping re-ignite demand later in the window.

Key takeaway: The structure of the promotion matters, but where you deploy it in your catalog matters more.  Hero SKUs paired with simple, easy-to-understand deal types still win.

Timing: Late-Event Surges Are Real (and You Should Plan for Them)

One of the more interesting patterns we saw internally was when the biggest lifts happened:

• Our “S&O” and “Other” brand segments (think everyday consumer products) performed consistently well throughout the event window.

• Health & Wellness–focused brands saw their largest boosts over baseline in the last four days of the promotion, rather than at the very start.

That late surge lines up neatly with what third-party data showed during Prime Day:

• Momentum Commerce and others observed that Prime Day 2025 started relatively slow and finished strong, with a heavy share of sales landing on Days 3–4 of the four-day event as discounts deepened and shoppers took more time to compare.

  
  

The holiday period behaves similarly. With so many overlapping sales (Amazon, Walmart, Target, TikTok Shop, etc.), shoppers are increasingly:

• Price-checking across platforms

• Waiting to see if “better” deals appear

• Using Cyber Week as one checkpoint, not the final deadline

Key takeaway: Don’t front-load all of your budget and deals. Plan for a late-window push, especially for categories like Health & Wellness where shoppers may wait until closer to the actual holiday to stock up.

Not Every Brand Wins—Even in a Record Year

Even in a strong year, we had three brands finish ~25% below 2024 sales during the same period.

Given the broader backdrop—record online sales, more shoppers overall, and heavy retailer discounting—that underperformance is more about relative position than lack of demand:

• Competition intensified. Prime Day 2025 alone drove holiday-like ecommerce volumes across all retailers, not just Amazon. Digital Commerce 360+1

• Discount expectations rose. Some analyses suggest that discounts of 40%+ are increasingly needed to truly stand out during major events. Brands that were more conservative often struggled to win visibility. Envision Horizons

• Independent sellers are carrying more of the load. In the 2024 holiday period, Amazon reported that 60% of Black Friday and Cyber Week sales came from independent sellers, mostly small and midsize brands. Fit Small Business That competitive mix hasn’t gotten any easier in 2025.

When you combine rising competition with higher discount thresholds and shifting consumer priorities, it’s easy for a good brand to get out-promoted, even in a strong demand environment.

Key takeaway: If a brand underperformed in 2025, it’s probably not because shoppers “weren’t there.” It’s more likely a signal that promo depth, advertising coverage, or assortment strategy wasn’t matched to the new baseline of competition.

What This Means for Your 2026 Amazon Plan

Based on both our anonymized portfolio results and the public data coming out of Prime Day and the 2025 holiday season, here are a few strategic lessons we’re carrying forward:

1. Treat Events as Windows, Not Days

Prime Day’s extension to four days and the “always-on” nature of holiday deals mean you’re no longer planning for a single spike—it’s a multi-day (or multi-week) curve.

• Pace budgets so you can support:

  • Early discovery

  • Mid-event testing

  • Late-event retargeting and deal amplification

• Expect weekend and late-window strength, especially for replenishable and wellness categories.

2. Align Deal Mechanics With Product Roles

Use deal types intentionally across your catalog:

• Put simple, strong strike-through Sales on:

  • Hero SKUs

  • Bestseller bundles

  • Products with proven conversion

• Use Prime Exclusive Discounts (PEDs) to:

  • Win visibility on more price-sensitive items

  • Support newer launches that need a push

• Evaluate results not just on “lift,” but on:

  • Incremental profit

  • Attach-rate of non-promo items

  • Organic ranking improvements after the event

Our own data shows that even when PEDs delivered higher percentage lifts, strike-through Sales took the revenue crown because they were attached to the right products.

3. Plan for Segmented, Category-Specific Timing

The fact that our Health & Wellness brands peaked in the final four days while other categories were strong earlier is a reminder:

• Different categories have different buying cycles and decision timelines.

• Your event calendar, discount cadence, and ad strategy should reflect that:

  • Consider launching deeper H&W deals closer to the holiday.

  • Let some everyday categories run strong from the outset to catch early shoppers.

4. Use YoY Outcomes as a Diagnostic Tool, Not a Trophy Case

If your brand:

• Grew triple digits → The next step is to figure out why. Was it new distribution, better ad coverage, a stronger deal strategy, improved inventory, or a combination?

• Grew modestly or stayed flat → Look at where you were out-competed:

  • Were your discounts deep enough for this new landscape?

  • Did you maintain visibility throughout the whole event window?

• Declined → The macro environment likely wasn’t the issue. Start with:

  • Share of voice versus last year

  • Price position versus competitors

  • Deal depth versus category norms

  • Assortment changes or stock-outs

Closing Thought: Strong Season, Smarter Playbook

From Prime Day to Cyber Week, 2025 proved that:

• Demand is still there. Consumers are shopping heavily during big events, both on Amazon and off.

• Shoppers are more strategic. They’re comparing across retailers, waiting for the right price, and responding to clear value.

• Execution beats participation. Simply “showing up” with a banner discount isn’t enough anymore.

For our partners, that meant a 37% YoY lift across active brands, some massive individual wins, and a small handful of brands that remind us where the gaps still are.

As you review your own post-holiday numbers, the question isn’t just “How did we do?”

It’s “What does this year’s data tell us about the way we plan, price, and pace our next big event?”