The post-Christmas gift card surge is Amazon sellers' secret weapon
Gift cards represent more than 55 percent of the average shopper's gifting budget, and the redemption wave starting December 25 is a major sales window for Amazon sellers. The global gift card market stood at $984.3 billion in 2023 and is forecast to hit $3.09 trillion by 2030; North America accounted for $344.51 billion, with Amazon gift cards alone representing up to $34 billion. Amazon's cards have been the most requested for four straight years, 71 percent of consumers now store cards digitally, and 38 percent of cards are redeemed within the first month.
Gift card shoppers behave differently: 61 percent spend beyond the card's value, averaging $31.75 in overspend; they are 2.5 times more likely to pay full price; and 34 percent visit listings they otherwise would not. Sellers are advised to run a post-holiday offer, such as 10 percent off with a promo code advertised in image stacks, ads, and email, through late January. Meanwhile $23 billion sits on unused cards held by 43 percent of Americans, pure breakage income for issuers.
In aggregator news, Thrasio, once the gold standard of Amazon roll-ups, is now suing its own founders, alleging they misled investors and lenders with a valuation above $12 billion, squandered $3.4 billion on unsustainable growth, and extracted roughly $338 million through self-dealing share sales while creditors went unpaid.
AI video tooling jumped forward twice in one week: OpenAI's Sora was answered by DeepMind's Veo 2, which renders 4K video with stronger prompt fidelity, alongside an upgraded Imagen 3 image model and an experimental remixing tool called Whisk. Pika 2.0 also shipped with scene-ingredient uploads for consistent subjects.
A simple competitive trick is circulating: scrape the top 200 competing ASINs for a product, export to a spreadsheet, and compare conversion rates against your own listing.
In other headlines, sellers are revolting over a new Amazon policy, and the rise of Shein and Temu is driving cross-retailer return abuse. More than 200 million wish lists are created on Amazon each holiday season.
