Adobe: Prime Day to break records with $26.3B in online sales
The upcoming Amazon Prime Day annual sales extravaganza is expected to produce impressive results.
Amazon is hosting Amazon Prime Day June 23-26, marking the second time the event will take place in June and third time it will occur outside of July. For the second year in a row, Prime Day will span four days, and as always numerous other U.S. retailers are holding competing online discount promotions.
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According to new analysis emailed to Chain Store Age by Adobe, U.S. retailers are expected to drive a record $26.3 billion in online spend from June 23 to 26, representing 9% growth from $24.2 billion in 2025. This would be more than what consumers spent on Cyber Monday and Black Friday 2025 combined, which drove $14.25 billion and $11.8 billion, respectively ($26.05 billion total).
Adobe also provided a number of other predictions for Prime Day 2026:
Discounts
Overall, Adobe projects discounts across U.S. retailers will be in the range of 12% to 23% off listed price. Across categories, Adobe expects apparel to have the biggest deals at 23% (vs. 24% in 2025). Other categories with major discounts will include electronics at 23% (vs. 23%), toys at 19% (vs. 19%), televisions at 18% (vs. 18%), appliances at 18% (vs. 17%), furniture at 15% (vs. 18%), computers at 14% (vs. 13%), and sporting goods at 12% (vs. 11%).
Other Prime Day predictions
- Adobe expects AI traffic to U.S. retail sites to increase by 103% compared to June 2025.
- Buy now, pay later (BNPL) usage is expected to tick up during the Prime Day event. Adobe expects BNPL to drive $2.04 billion, up 5.5% year over year. This represents approximately 7.8% of e-commerce spending during the event.
- Mobile shopping is set to hit an all-time high, driving 54.2% of online sales (vs. desktop shopping) at $14.2 billion.
- Paid search is expected to remain the largest driver of retail revenue during the Prime Day event, accounting for 29.1% of total share with an expected growth of 2% year over year.
- Social media, while smaller than paid search at 4.4% share, is expected to grow the fastest at (up 15% year over year, highlighting the rising impact of influencer and paid social strategies. Influencers are expected to convert shoppers nearly 10x higher than social media overall. Affiliates are set to drive 22.3% of revenue, up12% year over year.
“Consumers have been conditioned to wait for big promotional periods, to hit the buy button on purchases such as apparel, refrigerators, and vacuum cleaners,” said Vivek Pandya, lead analyst, Adobe Digital Insights, in emailed commentary. “Outside of the holiday season in November and December, shoppers now have an opportunity to tap into big discounts during the summer months.”
Adobe analyzes direct transactions online, covering over 1 trillion visits to U.S. retail sites, 100 million SKUs and 18 product categories.
