Prime Video ads lifted sales 1.65% in WPP-Amazon study

Streaming TV-on-demand advertising delivered a mean lift of +1.65% in modelled business outcomes across eight UK brands, with the best single campaign reaching +6.63%. That is the headline finding of a six-month study by WPP Media conducted with Amazon Ads, published October 26, 2026, and it addresses a question the ad industry has asked for years: can streaming sell things, or just make people faintly aware of them?

The research covered Prime Video campaigns for eight UK brands that do not sell on Amazon, spanning retail, automotive, healthcare and travel. Each campaign ran for four weeks between December 2025 and May 2026, reaching roughly 20% of the UK population at an equivalised national spend of about £100,000.

The arithmetic is easy to state. If the mean results were replicated for a £10 million (€11.9m) brand, it would deliver the equivalent of £165,000 in incremental revenue over a single campaign flight. The campaigns in the study generated a 22% stronger ROI against the benchmark of the all-channel media average of the brands involved.

How did they measure it?

WPP Media applied its proprietary geo-lift solution to isolate the incremental sales impact of Prime Video from all other media activity, supported by a meta-analysis aggregating results across the eight campaigns. The findings were then triangulated with Amazon Ads Brand Lift Studies, client Marketing Mix Modelling data and industry benchmarks from Profit Ability 2.

The Brand Lift Studies, run alongside the incrementality research, recorded a mean uplift in ad recall of +5.43 percentage points. Purchase intent and consideration rose by +2.01 percentage points.

Using YouGov data, the relationship between current customers and advertising awareness was used to predict longer-term impact. That produced a multiplier of 2.5x over two years, in line with Profit Ability 2 benchmarks. Short-term sales plus a two-year tail is a more patient picture of streaming TV than most pitch decks manage.

What are the executives saying?

Mark Stephenson, SVP of Commercial Strategy & Solutions Development at WPP Media, said: "Advertisers have long understood the brand-building power of TV, but this research gives us much clearer evidence of its ability to drive measurable business outcomes in the short term too."

Stephenson added: "By isolating the incremental impact of streaming TV, we can show that adding services like Prime Video to the media mix can translate directly into sales. For advertisers, the opportunity isn't about choosing between linear and streaming but understanding how each works together to make total TV investment work harder."

Krishan Patel, Director, Agency UK, Amazon Ads, framed the study's purpose plainly. "We set out to ask whether streaming TV can drive sales not just awareness," he said. "This research with WPP Media shows brands across sectors including automotive, healthcare and travel, achieving measurable sales lift with Prime Video. It gives advertisers the confidence to invest in streaming TV knowing it can deliver immediate commercial impact as well as long-term brand growth."

Complement, not substitute

The findings add to a growing evidence base that TV and video advertising delivers both brand-building and tangible, measurable business outcomes. The study's own conclusion is that streaming TV on demand is a valuable, measurable layer within the total video mix rather than a substitute for it.

A caveat worth keeping in view: the research was commissioned jointly by WPP Media and Amazon Ads, which sells the inventory in question. The methodology — geo-lift testing triangulated with mix modelling and third-party benchmarks — is sturdier than most vendor claims, but the commercial interest is not incidental.

Still, +1.65% mean incrementality across eight non-Amazon-selling brands is a data point advertisers can actually model against. Expect the linear-versus-streaming budget argument to continue, now with somewhat better ammunition on the streaming side.