For most of us, this time of year is about barbeques, beaches and sunburn – not sleigh bells and Santa hats.
But for adland, Christmas is bigger in August than it is in December. And right now, the decisions being made about this year’s Christmas ads by producers and CMOs could make or break their peak season.
It is fair to assume Christmas ads across APAC will be bigger and bolder than ever in 2025, as ad spend across the region continues to outpace global trends. But advertisers will be rightly concerned about their content blurring into the festive noise.
From iconic characters to the right music, attention during the festive season is hard won and easily lost. That’s why Lumen, in partnership with TVision, analysed three years of eye-tracking data to understand which Christmas ads won the most attention – and why.
On the surface, the results revealed shifting cultural preferences. But when you look deeper, they show fundamental trends about how, where and why consumers engage with festive ads in the way that they do.
For marketers and producers, the results prove that the devil really is in the detail at Christmas. From the right soundtrack to a timeless icon, the ‘winning’ Christmas ad is the one that brings together brand assets that are unique, relatable and ownable.
Master the essentials
Banging soundtracks, compelling stories, and unforgettable icons are as essential as decorations on a Christmas tree.
But you have to find a story worth telling.
We all love a good story – no less so than at Christmas. For any ad to capture and hold audiences’ attention, it needs to build rich, evolving plots that intrigue at the start, build emotional connections in the middle, and deliver the satisfying endings audiences crave.
Aldi has mastered this formula over the past three years. Its Chocolate Factory and Home Alone campaigns both rewarded viewers with emotionally satisfying endings that kept them watching – and won strong levels of attention in return.
Home Alone achieved a view rate of 66% and an average view time of 36.7 seconds. Chocolate Factory improved on this the following year, with a 74% view rate and 39.2 seconds average viewing time.
The lesson is clear: tell a good story. Intrigue, emotional connection and satisfying endings do a far better job at sustaining attention than a standard Christmas montage. Whether it tackles an important societal issue or tells the family narratives we all relate to, find a story worth telling and stick to it.
“Christmas music” is not what you think
Our Christmas music preferences are changing, so choose your soundtrack wisely.
Music can make or break a Christmas ad – but not in the way some might expect.
Audiences are overloaded with Mariah Carey and sleigh bells in December, and they’re growing tired of it. Our data found some of the best-performing ads were those overlaid with music that had nothing to do with Christmas.
Consumers prefer old-school bangers to Christmas crackers. Modern or classic, popular music is doing a far better job of capturing audiences’ attention and driving memory encoding.
Marketers therefore need to think carefully about finding a catchy song and embedding it into a brand’s identity. From Bugsy Malone to Van Halen, marketers shouldn’t scrimp and save – soundtracks audiences want to sing along to are an invaluable investment
The “icons amplification effect”
From Coca-Cola’s Polar Bears to Will Ferrell, we all have characters that we associate with Christmas – but these connections are built over years, not months or days.
Dawn French and Aldi’s Kevin the Carrot both achieved high view rates and got an ‘unfair share’ of the attention pie. Why? Because they featured year after year, until audiences came to associate them directly with their brands.
This is why marketers need to plan for the long haul – reinventing ads, narratives and themes every year will put brands back to square one. Consumers pay more attention to the icons, stars and characters that appear year after year than those appearing for the first time.
Ultimately, it’s the brands with an eye on 2030 that will win more attention, not those focused solely on 2025.
The magical realism of Christmas
Unlike Christmas music, audiences are still won over by the visual elements of December – think snowflakes, sleigh rides and twinkling lights.
But the closer we get to December 25th, the more Christmas iconography blurs into one and loses its impact. Brands can avoid this by making subtle tweaks to turn Christmas staples into ownable, unique brand assets.
Whether it’s adjusting colours or putting a fresh spin on a Christmas list, brands can create visual assets that build powerful associations while invoking traditional festive feelings.
Build and combine your brand assets, and win attention for Christmases to come
The biggest attention winners in our analysis – Aldi, McDonald’s, and Lidl – didn’t rely on one magic trick. They combined the right brand assets into an engaging, repeatable formula that audiences can easily recognise, and more importantly, remember.
As brands finalise this year’s Christmas ads, marketers and producers need to think about the emotional connections they’re making. Whether it’s visual cues, soundtracks that stick, or emotional, story-led narratives, brands need to pull the right levers – not only to create a winning Christmas ad this year, but to establish a winning formula for years to come.
A note on methodology
Lumen and TVision’s attention measurement uses passive eye-tracking on a panel of 750 consented households with TV-mounted webcams. This enables TVision to accurately measure eyes-on-screen time for every second of ad playback on their main TV set, and whether people’s heads were turned to the TV whilst an ad is played.
For this analysis, we collected data on the attention paid continuously over three years. We created a composite metric that combines the percentage view rate and the average view time to calculate ‘attentive seconds per thousand impressions’ (APM). This provides media buyers with an estimate of how many seconds of attention they have received per thousand impressions purchased.
This approach moves beyond opportunity-to-see or click-based metrics to show exactly which ads people chose to watch, and for how long.
Source: warc.com