Amazon Ads · Status at source date: Newsletter archive
Amazon overhauls strikethrough pricing and typical price validation rules
Amazon has announced two structural changes to how reference prices are validated on listings, effective in late April and May, respectively. From April 23, List Price: the crossed-out price shown next to a sale price: will only be displayed if the product has verifiably sold at that price on Amazon or is currently selling at that price at another retailer.
What changed
Listings that cannot substantiate their List Price will have the strikethrough automatically removed. From May 18, Typical Price: Amazon's baseline for calculating savings: will incorporate discounted prices if a product has been discounted for more than half of the prior 90 days, effectively making the discounted price the reference point.
The changes directly target practices where sellers inflate reference prices to create artificially large perceived discounts. Vanessa Hung notes that the pricing history chart, already visible on product pages and in Rufus conversations, is now the data source Amazon uses for both validation decisions: meaning past pricing behaviour is a direct input into current listing conversion potential.
Why it matters for advertisers
For you, this means auditing the last 90 days of pricing data for your top ASINs immediately: count the days on discount, verify your List Price externally, and recalibrate any deal or coupon strategy that relies on reference price positioning ahead of the April deadline.
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Amazon overhauls strikethrough pricing and typical price validation rules
Amazon has announced two structural changes to how reference prices are validated on listings, effective in late April and May, respectively. From April 23, List Price: the crossed-out price shown next to a sale price: will only be displayed if the product has verifiably sold at that price on Amazon or is currently selling at that price at another retailer. Listings that cannot substantiate their List Price will have the strikethrough automatically removed. From May 18, Typical Price: Amazon's baseline for calculating savings: will incorporate discounted prices if a product has been discounted for more than half of the prior 90 days, effectively making the discounted price the reference point.
The changes directly target practices where sellers inflate reference prices to create artificially large perceived discounts. Vanessa Hung notes that the pricing history chart, already visible on product pages and in Rufus conversations, is now the data source Amazon uses for both validation decisions: meaning past pricing behaviour is a direct input into current listing conversion potential.
For you, this means auditing the last 90 days of pricing data for your top ASINs immediately: count the days on discount, verify your List Price externally, and recalibrate any deal or coupon strategy that relies on reference price positioning ahead of the April deadline.
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