Amazon's marketing portal that is used by merchants crashed on Tuesday night, according to sellers and consultants, wreaking havoc to one of the country's biggest online sales of the year.
The Prime Day sale for this year, a two-day special where customers can find budget items, ends Wednesday as Amazon scrambled to correct the issues. The portal crash did not impact shoppers.
According to Bloomberg, the portal allows merchants and brands to adjust their ad budget in bidding for a keyword so the products they are selling would appear on searches in response to queries by customers. When the portal experiences a problem, advertisers have no idea how much they are spending on Amazon ads.
Reports indicate that the sale started fast on Tuesday. Momentum Commerce revealed that in the first seven hours, sales noticeably went up to almost 12% as compared to the same period in the previous year.
Momentum handles 50 brands in different categories and deems the sale as crucial for online sellers and also for Amazon. According to Tech Bullion, the sales of the brands handled by Momentum reach $7 billion annually in Amazon.
An Amazon spokesperson stated in an email that a small portion of advertisers were able to access the portal for a brief time and that the company is already resolving the issue.
"There is no impact to ad delivery and advertiser campaigns continue to run as they intended," it assured the public.
According to Jed Rawson of Pirawna consulting firm, users were not able to use the portal for almost two hours before it was finally fixed.
