17 Oct
2026
Amazon's October Prime Big Deal Days ran on October 6 and 7, and the first hard numbers are in. The headline is solid growth: U.S. online spending across retailers reached $9.86 billion over the two days, up 8.5% from $9.09 billion a year earlier, according to Adobe data reported by Chain Store Age. But the more interesting findings sit underneath that total. They show what people actually bought, how they shopped, and what that says about the holiday season now underway.
Here is a closer look at the results, drawing on Adobe's transaction data and Numerator's purchase tracking and shopper surveys.
Before the event, Adobe forecast $9.9 billion in online spending, up 9.2% year over year. The final tally of $9.86 billion and 8.5% growth came in slightly under that mark. It is a small miss, and the event was still a clear success by most measures, but it fits a theme running through this fall's data: shoppers are showing up, yet they are not spending without limits.
Adobe's numbers cover online spending at U.S. retailers broadly, not just Amazon. That is important, because competing events ran at the same time. According to Numerator, 33% of Prime Big Deal Days shoppers also took part in Walmart Fall Deals and 24% joined Target Circle Deal Days. October has become a multi-retailer sales season rather than a single-store event.
If you picture a deal event as a rush on big-screen TVs, the Numerator data tells a different story. Average household spend was $114.01, up 9% from $104.69, and the average order was $48.74, up 7% from $45.42. More than half of households (54%) placed two or more separate orders. The average item cost $23.19, 68% of items sold for under $20, and only 2% sold for more than $100.
The top-selling items were notably ordinary: Premier Protein shakes, Lysol disinfecting wipes, Scott ComfortPlus toilet paper, Dawn Powerwash spray and Dunkin' Refreshers drink packets. The leading categories were beauty and cosmetics, apparel, and health and wellness.
That pattern says a lot about household budgets in late 2026. Many shoppers are using big sale events to stock up on things they would buy anyway, locking in a lower price on paper goods and pantry staples. It is less about splurging and more about stretching a paycheck.
Adobe's category data shows where discretionary spending did surge. Compared with average daily sales in September 2026, toys were up 158%, video games 90% and electronics 85%. Within electronics, headphones and speakers jumped 300%, smartwatches 255%, cameras 135%, smartphones 130% and TVs 95%.
The calendar also played a role. Halloween costume sales rose 610% over the September daily average, and candy rose 180%. Baby products were strong as well, led by infant and toddler furniture (up 160%) and baby toys (up 115%). Essentials grew too, with household cleaning and paper products up 55%.
One detail is easy to miss: these category figures compare the event to an average September day, not to last year's event. They show the size of the sales spike, not year-over-year growth, so they are best read as a map of shopper priorities rather than proof of a category boom.
The most forward-looking numbers concern how shoppers found deals. Adobe reported that social media drove 7% of online revenue during the event and was the fastest-growing channel, up 40% year over year. Affiliates and partners, including influencers, accounted for 21.9% of revenue, up 11%. Adobe also found that influencers converted shoppers 11 times more often than social networks overall.
Mobile shopping kept climbing too. Phones accounted for 52% of online sales, about $5.1 billion, up roughly 13% from 2025. Buy now, pay later was used for 6% of online orders, totaling $692.3 million, up 4% from last year.
Taken together, this is a picture of shoppers who browse on their phones, take recommendations from people they follow, and check out quickly. For brands, it means a trusted voice can matter as much as a low price.
Amazon positions its October event as the start of holiday shopping, and some shoppers treated it that way. Numerator found that 20% bought holiday gifts and 18% of gift buyers finished more than half of their gift shopping during the sale. But most were not ready: 56% said they were unsure what they wanted for the holidays, and 32% felt it was simply too early to buy.
Shoppers were also careful. Fifty-six percent compared prices at other retailers before buying, most often Walmart (66%), Target (40%) and club stores (27%). And among those who also shopped Amazon's July Prime Day, 58% said the deals were about the same, 13% said October's were better and only 2% preferred July. Deal fatigue is not setting in, but deal skepticism clearly is.
The October event offers a few practical lessons for the weeks ahead:
Prime Big Deal Days confirmed that U.S. shoppers are still spending, still responding to deals and increasingly shopping through social media and creators. It also confirmed that they are cautious, comparing prices and favoring essentials and small-ticket items. The next test comes in November. Adobe expects $275.1 billion in online spending over November and December, and the October results suggest that growth will depend on whether retailers can convert all that careful browsing into gift purchases. Watch Adobe's Thanksgiving-weekend tallies, the Census Bureau's October retail sales report, and whether social commerce keeps growing at its current pace. If it does, the way Americans discover and buy gifts may look noticeably different by the end of this season.
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