They said Bitdefender did not win the award this year only because they won it last year. I don't agree with their policy. If they performed better they should receive the award again.
As I understand last year Bitdefender and Kaspersky were even and they decided to give award to Bitdefender. This year situation was the same and they decided to give award to Kaspersky. That seems fair to me if there can't be two winners.
My experience was similar...in the US, two different companies (I worked for) with over 45,000 employees each (1998-2013)....McAfee had the AV contract. I assumed they had a good marketing dept.
And in my country, Norman (Norman, not Norton!) was one of the most popular ones in the educational circles (schools, collages, academies etc).
McAfee is very popular in big companies because it has a very detailed hips and policy editor that comes with the AV. Also it has a very good security portfolio and usually when you have to manage thousands of pc's you don't want to have different brands of security products installed (license cost, maintenance, incompatibilities, more issues...) https://www.google.es/search?q=mcafee+hips&safe=off&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjU662B8djKAhWKAxoKHRUdD2UQ_AUICCgC&biw=1094&bih=524#imgrc=EO7LqOHZGhEhjM: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1164552/000110465906064689/g206661mqi028.jpg