Amazon Prime Day 2026 runs from June 23 to 26. It is a four-day runtime like in 2025.
Last year, sellers weren’t prepared for a longer event. This year is different.
PPC preparation for a four-day Prime Day event is structurally different from that of a two-day Prime Day event. The main differences? CPCs will rise, yes, but not as quickly as in other years. The spikes won’t be as steep.
Many crucial factors you’ll have to consider are changing. That’s why we organized this Amazon PPC Checklist so you can thoroughly prepare for one of the most exciting events in eCommerce.
Why This Year Is Different for PPC Advertising
Two things changed in 2026 that will affect every campaign decision you make before and during the event.
The first is the format. Prime Day 2025 ran for four days for the first time. The data from that event showed that Day 1 of 2025 accounted for 34% of Sponsored Products sales, compared to 55% on Day 1 of the two-day 2024 event.
- The insight: Shoppers used the extended window to research before buying. Days 3 and 4 saw 310% and 443% year-over-year growth respectively, as buyers who were browsing early in the event finally purchased. Your ad campaigns will have to align with these tendencies.
Prime Day 2026 is also four days. If you structure your budget as a two-day event, you will run dry before the event finishes.
The second is automation. Automated tools have improved a lot in the last few years, and their use is much more general across sellers. Especially with the introduction of Performance+ to DSP orders. These tools are better at finding placements and optimizing bids than they were two years ago. They are also better at spending your budget, quickly.
- The insight: During this high-traffic event, an automated campaign without budget limits will exhaust your daily spend before your highest-converting hours arrive.
Everything in this checklist is built around these two insights.
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1. Create a Marketing Strategy for Prime Day 2026
First you have to decide what you want to accomplish during Prime Day. It all depends on your product. For some, Prime Day is a great opportunity to increase sales on their best products because what they sell is incredibly compatible with big discounts and impulse purchases.
For other sellers, it is also a big chance to acquire new customers. Yes, maybe their sales won’t increase that much because of the nature of their product. But they can use the increased traffic to reach new audiences.
But these two goals require different strategies:
- If the goal is increasing conversions, you can focus your spend on Sponsored Products with exact-match keywords that have been converting in the weeks leading up to the event. Double down on what you know that works.
- If the goal is new customer acquisition, focus on Sponsored Brands campaigns driving to your Store and Sponsored Display retargeting. These formats reach shoppers who have not yet purchased from your brand.
2. Build Your Campaign Structure Before the Event
A poor campaign structure shows its weaknesses fast when Prime Day hits every seller at the same time. Separate your campaigns into logical buckets before Prime Day starts:
a. Create a dedicated Prime Day campaign for event-specific keywords
Shoppers actively searching during Prime Day use different search terms than they do the rest of the year. These are seasonal keywords.
You have the option to run keyword research before June 23 and build a dedicated campaign for Prime Day-specific search terms.
- Note: Keep a close eye on spend. These keywords will be competitive and expensive. They can also drive real volume if your product has a visible deal behind it.
b. Set up product targeting campaigns against competitors
Prime Day is a big opportunity to take traffic from competitors. A well-placed Sponsored Products ad under a competitor listing can capture the increased intent Prime Day provokes in customers.
Build a list of your top five to ten direct competitor ASINs and the best-selling ASINs in your category. Launch product targeting campaigns against some of them before the event. These campaigns need time before they are useful by June 23.
3. Adjust Targeting to Top Competitors
Not every product in your catalog deserves a Prime Day budget. CPCs will increase, so you probably won’t afford to increase spend across all your catalog.
Identify your top three to five hero ASINs based on conversion rate, review count, and margin. The winners.
Focus your budget, your deals, and your listing optimization on them.
Products with weak listings, low review counts, or thin margins should either be excluded from Prime Day campaigns or have minimal spend. Sending traffic to a listing that is unlikely to convert wastes your money and inflates your ACoS.
Negate non-converting keywords
Pull every keyword and search term that has spend without generating a conversion in the last 60 days and add it as a negative. You don’t want to be wasting budget in useless terms, especially during Prime Day, where you will need that money the most.
4. Adjust Advertising Budgets and Bids
Do not save your budget increases right before Prime Day starts. Amazon recommends scaling budgets 3 to 5 days ahead of the event in 20 to 30 percent increments, giving campaigns time to adjust.
Remember that by this time you should have already chosen the top keywords for your winning products, negated wasting terms, and set up a Prime Day strategy for your campaigns.
Some sellers start the lead up even earlier, by two to three weeks, which means their campaigns build data and performance history at higher spend levels. If you have the resources to manage it, this is an option worth considering.
Set explicit daily budget caps on all campaigns
Every campaign should have a daily limit, but remember that Amazon’s Average Daily Budget policy allows campaigns to overspend by up to 100% on high-traffic days by drawing on unused funds from earlier in the month.
For a four-day event, you can protect your cash flow by grouping campaigns into Portfolios with strict overall budget caps.
For your hero ASIN campaigns, set budgets high enough to run the full day, check pacing every 2 to 3 hours and ensure your account-level “Average daily budget increase” setting is set to a threshold you can manage.
Adjust bids on important keywords
In case it wasn’t clear by now, we recommend increasing bids on your top exact-match keywords and your most important product targeting campaigns before Amazon Prime Day 2026 starts. CPCs rise during Prime Day. If you do not adjust, you lose placement share on the terms that matter most.
5. Use All Available Ad Types
Prioritize the ad types you have experience with. Ideally, it should look like this:
- Sponsored Products: The core of most Prime Day ad strategies. Shift budget toward top converters. After the event, wait at least 48 hours before measuring ROAS.
- Sponsored Brands: The format works better when campaigns have had time to gather data. Launch or review your Sponsored Brands campaigns now, not the week of the event. One tactic that consistently improves results: create a dedicated Prime Day subpage on your Store and point your Sponsored Brands campaigns there. Treat it like a sales page with your best deals.
- Sponsored Display: The ideal tool for audience building before the event and for retargeting during and after it.
- Amazon DSP: After the event closes, deploy your DSP retargeting audiences against shoppers who visited during Prime Day but did not buy. These campaigns will run at lower CPCs than during the event and capture late-stage purchase decisions.
6. DSP Retargeting and External Traffic
Before June 23, open your DSP and Sponsored Display dashboards and check that your audiences are populated and large enough to be useful on Day 1. Sponsored Display views- re-marketing audiences fill from research traffic from before the event.
DSP cart-abandoner and PDP-viewer audiences, where you have AMC access, need days to accumulate. Then is the time to perform Amazon DSP Retargeting.
Here is why this matters specifically for 2026: Days 3 and 4 of Prime Day are increasingly a retargeting event. In 2025, those two days drove 310% and 443% year-over-year growth as shoppers who were researching early in the event came back to buy. The warm audience you close on Day 4 is the one that has been accumulating in your retargeting pools for the past two weeks.
Conclusion
The Amazon Prime Day 2026 four day format changes how shoppers buy, which means sellers have to adapt to how budgets are spent and how campaigns perform throughout the event. The takeaway is pretty simple: Sellers who prepare early will be in a much stronger position than those who wait until the last minute.
Frequently Asked Questions About Amazon Prime Day 2026 (FAQs)
When should I start preparing my PPC campaigns for Prime Day 2026?
Ideally, preparations should begin at least two to three weeks before Prime Day.
How much should I increase my Amazon advertising budget for Prime Day?
There is no universal percentage that works for every seller, but Amazon advises increasing budgets by 20% to 30% increments in the last 3 to 5 days leading up to Amazon Prime Day 2026.
Which Amazon ad type performs best during Prime Day?
Sponsored Products typically drive the largest share of sales because they appear directly in search results and product pages. However, Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Display, and Amazon DSP each play an important role too.
Should I increase keyword bids before Prime Day starts?
In most cases, yes. Competition increases significantly during Prime Day, which pushes CPCs higher. Raising bids on your highest-converting keywords before the event can help maintain visibility and placement during Prime Day.
Should I advertise all of my products during Prime Day?
Usually not. Prime Day budgets tend to perform best when concentrated on your strongest ASINs.
Is Your Prime Day PPC Strategy Ready for a Four-Day Event?
Most Amazon sellers will spend more during Prime Day 2026, but not all of them will generate more profit. The difference comes down to a long list of factors that can be difficult to grasp if this is your first event.
If you’re unsure whether your campaigns, bids, and retargeting strategy are ready, now is the time to find out.
Fill out the form below and schedule a free strategy call with our Amazon advertising experts. We’ll review your current approach, identify potential gaps, and show you opportunities to maximize Prime Day performance before the event begins.
No obligation. This is no sales call. Just actionable insights tailored to your business.