Amazon has confirmed Prime Day 2026 runs June 23 to 26. Four days, compressed buying intent, and CPCs that typically surge 20% to 90% above baseline. What you do this week matters more than anything you can optimise during the event itself.
Get the Foundations Right This Week
1. Audit every campaign for budget caps
Pull a budget exhaustion report for the past 30 days. Any campaign hitting its daily cap more than twice a week will cut out before noon on Prime Day. Raise those caps now, or redistribute budget to uncapped campaigns.
2. Expand keyword coverage
Harvest your Search Term Reports from the past 90 days and promote converting search terms that do not yet have an exact-match campaign. By June 23, those campaigns will have bid history and the algorithm will place them confidently.
3. Build negative keyword lists
Irrelevant spend is amplified when traffic multiplies. Load campaign-level negatives for known wasted queries before the event starts.
Three to Five Days Out: Scale Deliberately
1. Raise budgets in stages
Amazon’s Prime Day advertising guide recommends incremental budget increases in the days before the event rather than a single jump. Staged scaling gives the algorithm time to adjust without disrupting campaign behaviour when it matters most.
2. Launch a Prime Day Sponsored Brands headline
Create a short-run SB campaign with deal-aware copy and link it to a Brand Store page rather than a single ASIN. Shoppers who browse past the initial click stay inside your brand.
During the Event: Do Not Set and Forget
1. Check bid win rates on peak days
June 23 and 24 carry the heaviest traffic. If impression share drops in the morning, your bids are being outcompeted. A targeted increase on your best-performing campaigns at peak hours protects visibility without blowing budget across the whole event.
2. Track ACOS by campaign type, separately
Branded SP and non-brand SP behave differently during Prime Day. Know before the event which campaigns you are willing to let run above target for new-to-brand acquisition and which ones you will hold to goal.
One Format Worth Getting Live Before June 23
Sponsored Brands Video is now Rufus-eligible. Amazon’s AI shopping assistant surfaces SBV creative in response to relevant queries, expanding reach well beyond keyword targeting into conversational search. If SBV is not running when Prime Day starts, that channel is closed to you.
Good news: creating one does not require a production budget. Amazon’s Video Generator converts product images into a 15 to 30 second ad in minutes.
The Takeaway
Eleven days is enough time to do this properly. Clean campaign structure, adequate budget headroom, and a Sponsored Brands Video ready before June 23 will outperform anything you can fix during the event itself.
