These aren’t just copycat events — they are growing competitors that deserve a place in your brand’s Prime Week strategy. Numerator reported that last year, 53% of shoppers compared Amazon’s prices to other retailers like Walmart and Amazon before making their Prime Day purchases.
Let’s break down what this means for advertisers and why ignoring Walmart and Target during this retail moment might cost you more than you think.
Halo Momentum Is Real
Walmart Deal Days and Target Circle Week have evolved into more than just an Amazon counterpunch. Both events include major savings on top seasonal picks like electronics, home, toys, travel, and back-to-school essentials, with a clear focus on digital-first shopping behavior. For Walmart, many of these deals go live on Walmart.com, via the app, and in store, with early access for Walmart+ members. Target is similar, making their deals available to all shoppers online and in-store with a (free to join) Target Circle membership, and providing early access to the paid version of the subscription, Target Circle 360.
For brands that don’t typically promote on other retailers, we get it — Amazon promos often take the front seat. But traffic data tells a different story: retail site traffic spikes across the board during Prime Week, including on Walmart. Last year, during Walmart’s event, there was a 17% uptick in online visits, and for Code3 clients specifically, overall engagement rate was 11% stronger WoW.
Numerator also reported last year, 35% of Prime Day shoppers also shopped Target Circle week and Walmart Deals. Shoppers aren’t just deal-hunting on Amazon, they’re comparing, researching, and clicking through multiple retailers. If you're not showing up competitively on other retail media networks, your competitors might be. And once a shopper clicks away, you may not get them back.
Even Without Deals, There’s Strategy
Most brands focus their summer promotional energy on Amazon, and that’s a solid play. But even if your brand isn’t running discounts on Walmart or Target, that doesn’t mean sitting out altogether.
Here’s how we think about it:
- Identify high-priority categories: Focus on the SKUs or categories you do want to win during the week. Make sure you’re competitive with pricing, copy, and imagery, even without markdowns.
- Don’t burn budget for the sake of visibility: For categories that aren’t a growth priority, we often advise pulling back on spend to protect ROAS.
- Use Prime Week as a Walmart and/or Target traffic test: It’s a good moment to evaluate whether certain products or categories pick up momentum on Walmart and/or Target. The data can help guide future investments.
- Optimize Category Placement Multipliers on Target: This allows brands to be competitive as shoppers are browsing in multiple categories for deals.
Let’s take a deeper dive into copy and imagery. On both Walmart and Target, copy and images are VERY important as relevancy on the platform takes into account PDP content, images and click throughs. This means that if brands want to improve their relevancy and move up in ranking both for ads and organically, they need to have optimized PDPs. If a brand has low relevancy, they may struggle to scale spend, given that Walmart and Target don’t push ads for items solely based on the highest bid. If a competitor has a lower bid, but stronger relevancy then they will win the auction. Bottom line: PDP optimizations and improving CTR during this time is huge for being more visible on the Walmart/Target SERP.
Cross-Channel Wins Require Cross-Channel Thinking
Let’s not forget that today’s shoppers are platform agnostic. They don’t care whether they’re buying on Amazon, Walmart, or TikTok Shop — they care about value, convenience, and trust. By investing only in Amazon and ignoring other retail media networks, you could be leaving reach and revenue on the table.
Our advice? Don’t overcomplicate it, but don’t underestimate it either.
- Audit your presence: Are your PDPs optimized? Are your reviews recent? Do your top-performing Amazon products have an equivalent Walmart and Target strategy?
- Align internally early: Even without a full Walmart or Target deal plan, know which SKUs you’re okay pulling back on and which ones are worth pushing.
- Expect increased competition: Ads will get more competitive during this period. Be ready to make quick, data-driven decisions as the event unfolds.
The Takeaway
Amazon might dominate the Prime Week narrative, but other platforms are actively earning shopper attention and dollars during this window. Brands that ignore it completely risk losing ground — especially to competitors that understand the full-funnel power of presence across platforms.
At Code3, we work with clients to build cross-channel retail strategies that are both ambitious and smart. That means knowing when to lean in, when to hold back, and when to simply be ready, because opportunity doesn’t always come wrapped in a lightning deal.