Amazon.com (AMZN.US)’s advertising platform for businesses crashed on Tuesday night, causing problems for one of the company’s biggest promotions of the year, according to several Amazon sellers and consultants.
Amazon’s advertising portal is an automated system where brands and agencies can adjust their ad budgets and bid on keywords to get their products to show up in consumers’ search results. Without the online interface, brands’ ad spending on Amazon would be operating without clear guidance or information.
Momentum Commerce, which manages advertising for 50 different product categories, said its two-day Prime Day event got off to a strong start on Tuesday, with sales up nearly 12 per cent in the first seven hours.
“A small number of advertisers were unable to access their Amazon advertising control panel for a short period of time, and we are working to resolve the issue. This did not impact ad spend and advertisers are continuing to run their campaigns as planned,” said an Amazon spokesperson in an email statement.
Jed Rawson’s consulting firm, Pirawna, manages Amazon accounts that generate about $500m in sales on the site each year, and said several sellers were discussing the issue online. All of his clients were affected, and one survey of Amazon sellers on a private Slack channel showed four reporting problems. Several Amazon consultants also discussed the outage on LinkedIn.
Rawson said the website was down for about two hours before it was fixed. Amazon did not provide a timeline for the outage.