Brands Are Paying to Send Shoppers to Amazon

Hi there,

Prime Day just wrapped, and my feed is a wall of revenue screenshots.

Everybody's posting the number that went up. Almost nobody's posting the one that didn't move: how many of those buyers they'll actually be able to reach again.

But the thing that really stuck with me this week was smaller, and a little wild.

Brands were paying to send their own customers to Amazon

I watched more than a few brands drop a pop-up on their own DTC homepage during Prime Day: "Shop our deals on Amazon." Sit with what that actually is. You probably spent money getting someone to your site, the one channel you actually own, and then you used a pop-up to walk them across the street to Amazon.

Everyone has been talking about "meeting the customer where they want to shop" for years. This takes it to a whole new level. That is a truly omnichannel and customer-first approach.

But how you do it is everything, and this week showed both versions. Hey Dude ran an "available at Amazon, Prime Days are here" pop-up that asked for your email and phone number for special deals before sending you off. They get the Amazon sale and a direct line to the customer. Other brands, however, just dropped a banner that takes you straight to Amazon.

It's an amazing tactic for getting the sale, but meeting them where they want to shop by escorting them out your own front door could mean winning the sale, but losing the relationship.

Key word here, "could."

The moment they leave with nothing exchanged, they stop being yours

Here's the catch nobody raises in the Prime Day planning meeting. The second that shopper clicks straight through to Amazon, they're gone in every way that matters.

You don't get their email. You don't get their phone number. You can't even tell which ad or which creative pulled them in, because the conversion happens on someone else's property. You handed Amazon a customer you paid to create, and you can't prove you created them. With an estimated 86% of online shoppers holding a Prime account [1], that handoff is happening at enormous scale.

So you get the sale. Amazon gets the relationship, the data, and the next time that person shops.

The back half of the year belongs to whoever kept the customer

More than $26 billion in online sales was forecast across retailers for the event [2]. That's a staggering amount of demand, and for a lot of brands it touched their product exactly once.

The deals are over. What's left is the question that actually matters: do you know who any of them are?

The brands that come out of Prime Day ahead aren't the ones with the biggest spike. They're the ones who kept a way to recognize the buyer and bring them back, instead of renting the moment and handing the relationship to a marketplace.

They met the customer where they wanted to shop AND kept the relationship. That's how you do omnichannel in a way that serves your consumers and the long-term growth of your business.

So, before you screenshot the revenue, ask yourself: how many of this week's buyers will you actually be able to talk to come October?

Talk soon,

Kait

A few extras:

Some of my favorite brands are hiring…

1. Estée Lauder - Manager, TikTok Shop
2. Caraway Home - SVP, Marketing & Ecommerce

Sources:

[1] Sky Canaves, eMarketer, as quoted in Retail Brew (Morning Brew), June 23, 2026.

[2] Modern Retail, June 2026 https://www.modernretail.co/operations/5-things-to-watch-for-this-prime-day/