Key findings:

  • John Lewis achieved the highest increase in Ad Awareness, followed by Marks & Spencer with its fashion and food campaigns.
  • Asda’s Grinch-themed ad resonated strongly, lifting its Ad Awareness score by 9.5 percentage points.
  • Waitrose also saw notable gains, with an increase of 9.3 percentage points respectively.

Christmas ad season is underway, and with all major players having rolled out their festive ads, it’s a good time to look how these ads have fared so far. 

We’ve picked the top five brands with the highest increase in Ad Awareness score (whether or not you have seen an advert for the brand in the past two weeks) since the beginning of November to see which Christmas ads are standing out.

YouGov BrandIndex data shows that there’s a clear frontrunner: John Lewis with a 21.1 percentage point increase. Marks & Spencer follows with the largest gains in Ad Awareness across both its supermarket and fashion retail segments. In the fashion retail category, the brand’s score rises from 25.4% to 39.2%: an increase of 13.8 points. The brand launched a series of festive campaigns for the fashion segment starting in late October, which may have contributed to its strong performance. Similarly in the supermarket section, the brand has seen an increase of 13.2 points.

Asda ranks fourth overall, with Ad Awareness growing from 19.9% to 29.4% since the start of November, an increase of 9.5 points – suggesting that its Grinch-starring spot has earned the notice of the UK public.

Waitrose shows a similar increase rounding out the top 5, with scores moving from 11.9% to 21.2% (+9.3).

Methodology: YouGov BrandIndex collects data on thousands of brands every day. Ad Awareness is based on the question: “Which of the following brands have you seen an advertisement for in the past two weeks?”. Scores are reported as percentages, derived from daily surveys of UK adults. Data is weighted by age, gender, region, social grade, and ethnicity using a raking methodology. Figures are shown as a 4-week moving average between 1 November and 2 December 2025. The change in scores is calculated as the difference between the highest and lowest daily scores within the period.

Image: Getty Images

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