Amazon Spends $5 Million in 14 Hours to Spur AmazonLocal

In a span of 14 hours, Amazon sold one million $10 gift cards for $5 each.

You can see the deal’s appeal for consumers, but what’s in it for Amazon? The offer was delivered to buyers through AmazonLocal, the web retailer’s own competing business in the daily deal space.

Savvr, a blog that tracks daily deal companies and their strategies, estimates that it typically costs about $5 to attract a new subscriber anyway. So rather than write a check, Amazon gave up some future revenues–part of which they may gain back when people spend more than $10 on their site.

Amazon’s gift card sale was the second-fastest selling deal in the industry’s short history, behind only LivingSocial’s offer with Whole Foods.