Amazon Peak Season Prep Timeline, 2023

Your top-of-funnel strategy should include Amazon DSP campaigns that build awareness and consideration, not necessarily driving sales. These campaigns should start at least 8 weeks prior to an event, and wind down 1 week prior to the shopping event. We still want to capture people 'window shopping' right up until the event begins. Then a very sharp cut on top-of-funnel ad campaigns during the actual event.
For the Prime Fall Event, it will be helpful to also include campaigns that allow you to gather an audience that you can later retarget for the Black Friday/ Cyber Monday shopping period.

You have until 11:59 p.m. (PDT) on August 11, 2023, to submit recommended deals to be considered for the event.

The time required to develop and publish updated product content will vary. Generally at least 6 weeks is required for adequate keyword research, copywriting, graphic design, reviews and approvals, and dealing with Amazon’s submission process.

In 2022, the cut-off date for inventory was 9/12 (for a 10/11 - 10/12 event).

Create a landing page for deals to display on your brand's Amazon Store.
Add the deals page to store navigation, as well as a visually enticing tile on the main page that allows visitors to easily find your deals.
Updates to Amazon Stores generally take X days to process.

It takes up to 2 weeks for Amazon to index product content (e.g. keywords, attributes). You'll want this updated content to be live at least a week prior to the actual shopping event, since many shoppers are doing research before the event.

Event-specific campaigns designed to convert shoppers, which run only during the event itself.
These are distinct from always-on BOFU campaigns that should be running at all times.

Predicted, not confirmed

Plan a debrief of the event to benchmark your results, learn what worked and what didn't.
This should be a more detailed summary of an immediate post-event recap. 1P Vendors in particular need extra time for the sales data to settle in order to get an correct recap.