The Kantar Media Reactions 2025 report has landed, and for anyone planning brand investment on Amazon, the headline finding is striking. Amazon ranks first globally for consumer ad preference, with Twitch and Prime Video also placing in the top five. Three of the world's five most preferred ad platforms, in the eyes of consumers, are Amazon brands.

This is not just a piece of positive news for the platform. It has direct and practical implications for how brands should be thinking about media planning in 2026.

About the report

Now in its sixth year, Media Reactions is Kantar's annual global study of the media landscape. The 2025 edition draws on interviews with more than 21,000 consumers aged 16 to 65 across 30 markets, alongside approximately 1,000 senior marketers. Together, these markets represent close to 90% of global media spend, giving the findings genuine weight as an industry benchmark.

The consumer top five

Among consumers globally, the full ranking for ad platform preference is Amazon in first, Snapchat in second, TikTok in third, Twitch in fourth, and Prime Video in fifth.

Amazon's top position is underpinned by a clear consumer perception: its ads are seen as relevant and useful. That distinction matters considerably more than it might initially appear. Kantar's research shows that campaigns are seven times more impactful among audiences who are receptive to advertising. Platform preference is therefore not a soft or secondary metric. It is a fundamental input for effective media planning and a direct multiplier on campaign performance.

The broader receptivity picture is also notable. For the first time, more than half of people globally described themselves as open to advertising, with 57% expressing receptivity in 2025, up from 47% the previous year. Attention is available. The question is where brands are choosing to compete for it.

The marketer top five

Marketers surveyed by Kantar have different preferences entirely. Their top five platforms are YouTube, Instagram, Google, Netflix and Spotify, a list that remains unchanged from 2024.

The gap between these two lists is the most significant finding in the report. No single platform appears in the top five for both consumers and marketers. Where brands are choosing to spend and where consumers are most open to advertising are, at a global level, two entirely different places.

Why Amazon's ad properties are different

Kantar's global director of media, Gonca Bubani, addressed the consumer-marketer disconnect directly in the report. She noted that Amazon's ad properties stand apart because they offer genuinely varied experiences across channels, rather than a single format or context. Twitch is the clearest illustration of this: consumers trust advertising on the platform more than anywhere else, yet many marketers still assume its gaming and live-streaming audience is too niche to warrant serious investment.

The reality is that Twitch's audience is neither small nor narrow. It is large, highly engaged, and unusually trusting of the advertising it encounters. The same underlying dynamic applies across the Amazon advertising ecosystem: Amazon.co.uk search ads, Prime Video streaming inventory, Twitch live content, and display across the broader network each deliver a different environment and a different quality of attention, all accessible through a single planning and buying infrastructure.

Consumer trust in Amazon advertising is not accidental. It reflects years of investment in relevance, and it compounds across every surface the platform operates.

What this means for media strategy

The Kantar data presents a clear challenge to conventional planning assumptions. Allocating advertising budgets according to marketer familiarity and comfort, rather than consumer receptivity, is a measurable missed opportunity. When receptivity carries a seven-times multiplier on campaign impact, the cost of that misalignment becomes significant at scale.

For brands with Amazon advertising already central to their media mix, the report validates that the channel has structural advantages that extend well beyond sales activation. For brands that have not yet fully committed to Amazon as a media platform, it is a compelling prompt to reconsider.

Building a strategy around consumer preference

At Vector, how consumers experience advertising matters as much to us as campaign mechanics. Amazon's position at the top of the Kantar rankings reflects what we consistently see in our own client data: well-planned, precisely targeted campaigns across Amazon's properties deliver stronger attention, engagement and commercial outcomes than comparable investment elsewhere.

We work with brand partners to build media strategies that reflect where their audiences are genuinely receptive, rather than defaulting to familiar channels. The Kantar Media Reactions 2025 report makes a compelling case for why that distinction is worth taking seriously.

Want to build a media strategy around consumer preferences and unlock your brand's full growth potential? Contact the Vector Retail Media team to find out more.

"Kantar's global director of media, Gonca Bubani, addressed the consumer-marketer disconnect directly in the report. She noted that Amazon's ad properties stand apart because they offer genuinely varied experiences across channels, rather than a single format or context."