While Buy With Prime was announced last April, it's easy to forget the program has yet to be live six months. This year's Prime Day gives the program a chance to see what the team has been doing, and here's what I've learned so far:

* Amazon has a Buy With Prime deals page on their website - they are driving traffic off Amazon for Prime Day.

* I counted up all brands and deals by category.- health, electronics, beauty, home dominated by far.

Breakdown of # Brands / (Deals) by Category:

Health: 22 / (119)

Electronics: 19 / (130)

Beauty: 18 / (106)

Beauty: 1 / (1) [not a mistype]

Home: 15 / (169)

Grocery: 10 / (62)

Outdoors: 8 / (72)

Pets: 4 / (42)

Fashion: 7 / (146)

Kids: 4 / (160)

* I would say 99% of brands I do not recognize. The top brands I do recognize with deals: Wyze, Anker, Targus -- primarily in electronics and 2 of the 3 are essentially Amazon-native brands that have broken out.

* Many of the products on Prime Day Deals are what I call "first-purchase profitable", even despite the fees. I estimate many of these items have 80+% gross margins.

Quite a few of the items have virtually unprovable benefits and charge high prices. Health and Beauty are rife with it.

If Health and Nutrition ever get real FDA regulation, a lot of D2C and marketplace brands are in trouble. Until then, to the moon!

* The most damning critique of Buy With Prime is of all the deals I looked at, I couldn't think of a single item that wasn't already flooded on Amazon. For Amazon, that may be a win because Buy With Prime badges are on D2C websites that weren't there earlier, but is it truly a win for the consumer?

Still unclear at best.

* I noticed someone hacked the Beauty category somehow on the Deals page - it's listed twice. Perhaps someone created an extra browse node by mistake?

* At some times while browsing these deals and I closed my eyes, I could literally be on any deals website -- AliExpress, Wish, Shein, you name it.

I understand this is Amazon's selection these days, but more and more I don't feel that a third-party-most future is beneficial for Amazon. Third-party selection can easily move and will go where the traffic goes.

Strategic selection is first-party and if other categories are moving to a "fast-fashion" model based on social media trends, is Amazon already behind the times?

* If Buy With Prime is to be successful, it needs to drive a "surprising" amount of traffic to a D2C website.

If it does not do this, I have difficulty believing this program will be around in 5 years. The majority of Amazon's focus with this program should be in improving MCF packaging and traffic generation (and to a lesser degree, advertising).

* My favorite brand by far is journaling company "New Mindset Who Dis?" selling a few self-help books. lol @ name