Amazon is looking to take advantage of the influx of new devices in consumers’ hands after Christmas by offering another outlet for impulse shopping, this time providing deep discounts on downloads and digital content.

The slashes in prices—which include 80 percent discounts on video games, 75 percent off on digital comics and 50 percent discounts on movies and television shows—are comparable to Amazon’s other discount structures, Prime Day, Lightning Deals and Gold Box. The sale began at 3AM today, and will run for 24 hours.

“I would say this is a way to test out how to take advantage of new devices given to consumers throughout the holiday,” said Marci Troutman, CEO of SiteMinis. “Many people may have also been given gift cards and other types of collateral media that can be used in this purchase sales event.

“Also, if the consumer sees the value of these types of digital entertainment downloads in terms of real cost, this is a win/win for everybody.”

Digital Day
The promotion has to be one of the more sweeping sales specifically on downloadable content that Amazon has held, if not the most. Generally applications and downloadable content follow more of an individual sale structure, forgoing the special occasion akin to Black Friday and Cyber Monday to offer discounts on distinct apps.

It seems that Amazon applying the Black Friday/Cyber Monday business model to after-holiday purchases, acknowledging the fact that many of the gifts people choose to give during the season—phones, tablets, laptops—themselves come with additional opportunities for transactions.

“Although broad discounting on an app marketplace is unique, apps on an individual basis have had strategies around discounting at some point,” Ms. Troutman said. “Think freemium vs. premium, basic vs. pro or just simply a brief period for a discount on the app itself—say, for the holiday.

“A more popular discount strategy is through in-app purchases—discounts on the digital coins or whatever collateral used in the app. This is fairly common. On the other hand, digital content is commonly discounted during these times.”

Deep discounts
Amazon has already thrown customers who simply cannot wait a few discounted items to satiate their appetites, but most users will be waiting to be notified of the highly publicized ones announced yesterday.

Digital Day is a more distilled version of Amazon’s previous offering on a branded discount day—Prime Day, which was introduced last year, and this year drove twice as many orders from Prime members as the inaugural offering and saw more than one million customers use the app for the first time (see story).

“All devices, including mobile (which is a large section of the digital devicemarketplace) are given to cool experiential moments, especially if a user is new to that device,” Ms. Troutman said.