BLOG: Retail
5 MIN READ | October, 2025 | BY Daniel Egor
The Hidden Challenge of Amazon Promotions
Amazon promotions - from coupons and Lightning Deals to Prime Exclusive Discounts - are often seen as a powerful lever for visibility and sales growth. Vendors welcome the sales spikes, rising chart lines, and improved product rankings.
For many vendors, the answer is unsettling. Without the right visibility into profitability, incrementality, and retail-media overlap, promotions risk becoming costly habits instead of strategic growth drivers.
False Incrementality: The Illusion of Growth
Incrementality is one of the most misunderstood aspects of Amazon promotions. Vendors often celebrate sales increases during a deal period, but not all of that growth is truly incremental.
Imagine a product that usually sells 100 units per week. A Prime Day deal boosts sales to 130 units. At first glance, this looks like a 30% uplift. But what if 20 of those units would have been sold without the discount? Suddenly, the “incremental” impact is just 10 units - far less than the margin sacrificed to fund the promotion.
This phenomenon, called false incrementality, means vendors may actually subsidize sales that would have happened anyway. Instead of creating new demand, promotions can simply pull forward purchases or shift demand from one SKU to another.
Educational takeaway: Measuring promotions only by sales lift is misleading. Incrementality - the sales truly generated by the deal - is the metric that matters.
ROI Blindness: Sales vs. Profitability
Vendor Central reports typically highlight unit sales and revenue. But unit sales alone do not reveal whether a promotion was profitable.
Once discounts, co-op fees, Amazon’s margin, and fulfillment costs are factored in, many promotions actually reduce profitability. For some products, promotions even move them closer to CRaP status (Can’t Realize a Profit) - a red flag that threatens future listing viability.
This ROI blindness prevents vendors from knowing whether a promotion added value or destroyed it. Without connecting retail data, cost structures, and media investments, vendors cannot accurately evaluate if their promotions were worth the spend.
True ROI analysis requires more than unit sales - it requires linking retail data with profitability metrics.
Data Fragmentation: When Numbers Don't Add Up
Even vendors who want to analyze incrementality face a challenge: Amazon’s data is fragmented.
Retail vs. Advertising:
Sales and ad data live in separate silos, making it difficult to connect spend to outcome.
Retroactive Adjustments
Amazon frequently changes sales figures after the fact, leaving vendors uncertain about which numbers to trust.
Country-by-Country Views:
Vendors with multi-market presence must stitch together different reports, currencies, and KPIs manually.
This fragmentation leads to delays, inconsistencies, and guesswork, especially when teams in different regions or functions are trying to align on promotion performance.
Without integrated data, vendors cannot form a reliable picture of whether promotions truly deliver incremental results.
Wasteful Media Spend: Paying Twice for the Same Sale
Another hidden risk is the overlap between promotions and advertising. Vendors often run Sponsored Ads or DSP campaigns on already discounted products.
This double attribution means a single sale may be:
- Discounted in margin (due to the deal).
- Counted as an “ad-driven conversion” (due to media spend).
In reality, the sale would have likely happened because of the promotion alone. By combining promotions and ads without visibility, vendors effectively pay twice for the same transaction - once in lost margin, and again in wasted ad spend. Promotions and ads must be evaluated together to prevent overlap and wasted budget.
The Way Forward: From Margin-Eating Deals to Profitable Growth
Amazon promotions will always be part of a vendor’s strategy. The key is not to run more promotions, but to run smarter ones.
Vendors should focus on three priorities:
- Measuring incrementality - Identify which promotions actually drive new sales.
- Protecting margin - Understand profitability, not just top-line lift.
- Integrating retail + media data - Ensure spend across discounts and advertising works together, not against each other.
When vendors shift their perspective from volume to profitability, promotions become powerful tools for long-term growth instead of short-term vanity metrics.
How CATAPULT Helps Vendors Take Control
At this point, the question is: how can vendors actually put this into practice?
That’s where CATAPULT comes in. Our analytics platform provides vendors with the visibility they need to turn promotions into profit:
The result: fewer, smarter, data-backed promotions that protect profitability and strengthen Amazon negotiations.
Smarter Promotions, Stronger Growth
Promotions on Amazon are a double-edged sword. Done without visibility, they can destroy profitability. Done with the right data, they can unlock incremental growth and long-term success.
By focusing on incrementality, profitability, and integration, vendors reclaim control over their Amazon promotions.
Ready to transform your promotions into profit?
Get to know CATAPULT
A brand-powered analytics solution delivering real-time insights and market intelligence.
About the author
Daniel Egor
Since 2018, Daniel has been passionate about and deeply involved in SaaS sales. His mission is to empower Amazon vendors with actionable insights and smart data to drive better decisions and maximize their marketplace impact on Amazon.
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