Three of the five ad platforms preferred by consumers are owned by Amazon, according to Kantar’s Media Reactions 2025.
The global study, which surveyed 21,000 consumers and nearly 1,000 senior marketers, placed Amazon at the top of this year’s consumer ranking, with Prime Video and Twitch coming in fifth and fourth, respectively. TikTok took third and Snapchat, which was praised for its fun and entertaining ads, secured second place. Amazon.com topped the list.
Shoppers are more receptive to advertising at the point of sale, according to Kantar’s study, which once again found that ‘point of sale’ is the highest-ranked ad channel among consumers. So, as the world’s largest e-commerce platform, Amazon had a built-in advantage.
But Twitch and Prime Video making the top five reflects the company’s broader effort to improve ad experiences, according to Gonca Bubani, global director of media at Kantar.
‘Amazon Ads has definitely been focusing more and more on how to get more revenue out of ads, to give a better experience to consumers and serve marketers better,’ she told MediaCat UK. ‘And I think that’s clearly starting to show more and more in the results.’
Amazon’s strong showing highlights the effectiveness of its ad targeting, powered by unmatched consumer data. Ads that are relevant, useful and less intrusive are paying dividends, particularly on Prime Video. The platform’s performance helps explain why Netflix this month joined Disney and Warner Bros in striking a partnership with Amazon Ads.
Twitch is more of an outlier. The format of the survey, which only asked active users of a platform to rank their perception, allowed it to punch above its weight. Its position as the most trusted brand among consumers, and fourth overall for consumer preference, stems less from ad targeting and more from the parasocial bonds between viewers and streamers.
‘If you think about it, you’re spending day-to-day with these streamers, getting to know them and interacting with them. That creates this trustworthy environment,’ Bubani explained.
Despite Amazon’s popularity with consumers, no Amazon platforms made marketers’ top five. Instead, marketers favourites were the same as in 2024: YouTube, Instagram, Google, Netflix and Spotify.
Marketers prize these platforms for their brand safety and the ability to measure performance. ‘Generally where the trust comes from is the fact that they can measure what’s happening. They have insight into it. It’s all established systems. So they can see what the ROI is to a degree,’ said Bubani.
Amazon still performed reasonably well with marketers, sitting just outside the top five, but Bubani believes retail media networks must build greater trust to secure a stronger position.
One brand notably absent from both rankings is X, formerly Twitter. Advertisers ranked it last for trust for the third consecutive year. Musk’s infamous ‘go fuck yourself’ message to advertisers in 2023 continues to define the relationship. X was the only brand to receive a negative perception score among advertisers, with 29% planning to cut spend in 2026 and nearly one in eight intending to withdraw entirely.
That is easier said than done. The Wall Street Journal reported this summer that Elon Musk and [former] CEO Linda Yaccarino had mounted an ‘extraordinary pressure campaign’ on advertisers, including threats of legal action, to force hesitant agencies and brands to spend more.
The pressure appears to have had some effect. Emarketer forecasts global ad spend on X to edge up slightly to $2.6 billion this year, though that remains far below the $4.5 billion it took in 2021.
This year’s Media Reactions survey isn’t all bad news for X. Bubani revealed that North American consumers ranked it second in preference and European consumers placed it third, suggesting recent efforts to improve ads (such as limiting the amount of emojis in a sponsored post) are paying off. The survey only covers existing users — an important caveat given the migration to Bluesky and Threads in protest of Musk’s moderation policies — but it nonetheless suggests a disconnect between consumers and markets, a theme of this year’s survey.
Main image taken from Twitch streamer Ninja’s ‘Fortnite Chill Sesh’ video
