Amazon UK Upfront 2026: Prime Video gets measured like TV, and national ads go local

Amazon held its UK Upfront at the Outernet in London earlier this month. Strip out the celebrity cameos and the Tomb Raider trailer, and 3 announcements matter to anyone spending money on advertising in the UK.

Prime Video will be measured on the same basis as broadcast TV. Amazon now has a tool that shows where your brand is underperforming by region and spends against it automatically. And national Prime Video campaigns will soon be able to carry hundreds of local versions from a single buy.

Here’s what each one means, and what we’d do about it.

The short version

• Prime Video joins Barb CFlight. It becomes the first streaming service in the UK’s unified TV measurement framework. Available in 2027.
• Geographic Insights and Activation (GIA). Regional performance maps plus automated bidding into under-penetrated areas. Live in the UK now.
• Location-based Interactive Video Ads. One national Prime Video campaign, hundreds of local offers, store locations or promotions. Due by the end of 2026.
• More reach, one platform. Over 90% of monthly ad-supported video-on-demand reach, UK commercial audio via Octave, and Amazon Ads Agent pulling it all into one AI-first platform.

1. Prime Video is about to be measured like TV

This is the big one for anyone running TV.

CFlight is Barb’s framework for reporting TV campaigns across broadcasters on one consistent basis. Until now, streaming has largely sat outside it. Planners have had to put Prime Video, Netflix and the rest in a separate column, using numbers supplied by the platforms themselves, and then try to compare them with ITV or Channel 4 delivery that’s measured completely differently.

From 2027, Prime Video campaigns can be planned and reported using the same industry-standard metrics as the major UK broadcasters. Prime Video has been in Barb’s pre-campaign planning tool since 2024, and according to Barb it’s already the UK’s biggest ad-supported streaming service by monthly reach. This step closes the loop on post-campaign reporting.

Our take: this moves streaming from “test budget” to a genuine line in the TV plan. When finance asks whether the Prime Video spend worked, you’ll be able to answer in the same currency as the rest of your TV. Expect pressure on other streamers to follow, and expect broadcasters to sharpen their pitch in response. If you’re building 2027 TV plans now, ask your planner how they’ll handle Prime Video once CFlight data is available, rather than bolting it on later.

2. Find the regions where your brand is underperforming

Geographic Insights and Activation uses Amazon’s retail data, or your own, to map how your brand performs region by region against category benchmarks. It highlights where your presence is weaker than it should be, then lets you launch a campaign that automatically pushes bids towards those higher-potential areas.

Amazon’s proof point is L’Oréal, which used GIA to target low-penetration regions in Germany for Kérastase hair serum. Compared with its standard always-on display campaign, it saw 38% lower cost per sale, and 11% lower cost per sale among new-to-brand customers.

Our take: this is genuinely useful for brands selling on Amazon, and it’s available now. But a regional gap isn’t always a demand gap. Before you pour budget into an area, check the boring stuff: stock availability, delivery times, local competitors and whether your offline distribution is weaker there. The map tells you where to look. It doesn’t tell you why. And remember the L’Oréal results are from Germany, so treat them as a direction rather than a benchmark for UK campaigns.

3. National campaigns with local relevance

Last year Amazon launched Interactive Video and Pause Ads on Prime Video. The new Location-based Interactive Video Ads build on that. A single national campaign can carry hundreds of ad variations, each with local offers, nearest store locations or regional promotions, all from one buy.

Amazon is pitching it squarely at automotive, restaurants and retail: anyone who wants a streaming viewer to get up off the sofa and walk through their door. It’s due to be available by the end of the year.

Our take: the media buying gets simpler, but the creative workload gets much bigger. Hundreds of variants need producing, checking and keeping accurate. Get one store’s opening hours or one dealership’s offer wrong and the “local relevance” backfires. This is exactly where AI-assisted creative production earns its keep, as long as a human signs off every version before it goes live. If you have a branch, store or dealer network, start getting your location data and offer feeds clean now, and agree how you’ll measure footfall or uplift before the campaign runs, not after.

4. More reach, and an AI-first platform to buy it

Amazon also spelled out how much it can now reach in one place: more than 90% of monthly ad-supported video-on-demand reach in the UK, according to Barb, plus audio from Bauer Media, Global and News UK through Octave. Amazon is also working with Bauer on research into what audio adds alongside streaming video.

All of this is being pulled together in Amazon Ads Agent, a connected, AI-first platform that brings Display, Video and Audio together with sponsored ads. Advertisers can run campaigns manually, let Amazon’s AI optimise, or use a mix of both.

Our take: one platform, one login and one optimisation engine is convenient. It also means more of your budget sits inside a single ecosystem, optimising towards its own definition of success. Use the AI optimisation, but test it against controlled manual campaigns, set clear guardrails, and keep independent measurement in place. Barb’s involvement with Prime Video is a welcome step in exactly that direction.

The content and sponsorship angle

For brands thinking beyond standard ad slots, Amazon is pushing its Brand Partnership Programmes: genre sponsorships, in-show integrations and fully bespoke deals tied into its retail and cultural moments. Uber Eats is now the first sponsor of Amazon’s entire comedy portfolio on Prime Video, including Last One Laughing UK, which Barb ranks as the UK’s number 1 streaming comedy season by commercial reach.

Live sport is the other big draw: a third season of UEFA Champions League football, the NBA’s return (with NBA Global Games coming to Manchester in January), and documentaries including All or Nothing: Manchester United.

What we’d do now

1. Running TV in 2027? Brief your planner to treat Prime Video as part of the TV plan, measured on the same basis, once Barb integration lands.
2. Selling on Amazon? Run GIA now. Look at your regional gaps, then sense-check them against stock, delivery and distribution before you spend.
3. Got physical locations? Prepare clean location and offer data, a creative versioning and approval process, and a footfall measurement plan ahead of the end-of-year launch.
4. Tempted to hand it all to the AI? Test it first. Run AI-optimised and manual campaigns side by side and compare on your numbers, not just Amazon’s.

Amazon is making a clear play to be part of the TV plan, not an add-on to it. For most UK advertisers, that’s good news: better measurement and sharper local targeting on premium inventory. The brands that benefit most will be the ones that prepare their data and creative before these tools land, rather than scrambling once they do.

If you’d like a second opinion on where Prime Video and Amazon Ads should sit in your 2027 plan, our paid media team would be happy to talk it through.