Introduction to Emotional Holiday Advertising
Every December, brands compete for something more valuable than views: emotional resonance. According to new data from DAIVID, 2025 may be one of the strongest holiday seasons yet for emotionally engaging advertising across North America. This year’s trends show an acceleration of effective holiday storytelling, including nostalgia, warmth, joy, and authentic human narratives.
Top Emotionally Engaging Holiday Ads
The list of top ads teaches us about crafting emotionally resonant creative. Let’s break down the top 10 ads and analyze what each ad teaches us about emotional advertising.
1. Disney, Best Christmas Ever
Disney’s spot leads the 2025 list with a commanding emotional profile, getting 169% more adoration, 149% more nostalgia, 125% more warmth, and 115% more joy than the average U.S. ad. The story pulls on the intersection of childhood imagination and holiday wonder.
Strategic takeaway: Emotional universality beats demographic targeting. A timeless story, well told, surpasses segmentation.
Score: 58.2% of viewers likely to feel intense positive emotions.
2. Chevrolet, Memory Lane
Chevrolet continues its tradition of leaning into family history, shared rituals, and Americana. "Memory Lane" is a deeply human piece, evoking reflective nostalgia.
Strategic takeaway: When your product has a long lifecycle, storytelling should reference the past to add emotional depth to the present.
Score: 57.5% of viewers likely to feel intense positive emotions.
3. Subaru Support Charities Like Make-A-Wish When You Get A New Subaru
Subaru leans into purpose marketing, reinforcing its "Share the Love" identity. Charity-driven campaigns often rank high on DAIVID’s emotional indices, but Subaru’s strength is its consistency.
Strategic takeaway: Authenticity is measurable. Audiences can detect whether a brand’s social message aligns with its long-term behavior.
Score: 56.5% of viewers likely to feel intense positive emotions.
4. Publix, Merry Birthday From Publix
Publix has mastered the art of "quiet emotional power." Its ads rarely rely on spectacle, instead focusing on family dynamics, cultural rituals, and everyday moments.
Strategic takeaway: Small stories often outperform big concepts. Audiences crave relatability as much as creativity.
Score: 55.6% of viewers likely to feel intense positive emotions.
5. Lego, Is It Play You’re Looking For?
Lego continues to position imagination as its emotional currency. The ad combines fantasy sequences with grounded holiday moments, appealing to both children and nostalgic adults.
Strategic takeaway: Invite viewers into the story. Ads that celebrate creativity encourage emotional participation.
Score: 55% of viewers likely to feel intense positive emotions.
6. Real Canadian Superstore, Bringing The Magic Of The Holidays With The Moose
This ad stands out because it doubles typical U.S. ad levels for warmth and gratitude, two emotions that consistently predict brand affinity.
Strategic takeaway: Unexpected characters can deliver familiar feelings if they serve a strong emotional narrative.
Score: 54.4% of viewers likely to feel intense positive emotions.
7. Teleflora, The Boy And The Bot
Teleflora’s film blends technology with humanity, discovering the emotional meaning behind giving and receiving flowers.
Strategic takeaway: Emotional relevance can come from genre-bending storytelling, when the payoff still ties back to the brand’s purpose.
Score: 54.2% of viewers likely to feel intense positive emotions.
8. Gap, Give Your Gift
Gap has been rediscovering its brand voice, and this year’s holiday ad continues the trend, focusing on music, movement, and human connection.
Strategic takeaway: Legacy brands can win big by refreshing, not reinventing, their core emotional themes.
Score: 53.7% of viewers likely to feel intense positive emotions.
9. Walmart, WhoKnewVille
Walmart goes whimsical with a fictional holiday town and an ensemble cast, ranking high for joy and warmth.
Strategic takeaway: Joy is an underrated emotional driver. When executed well, it performs nearly as strongly as nostalgia or empathy.
Score: 53.5% of viewers likely to feel intense positive emotions.
10. Crayola, Blue Christmas, and Uber, An Uber Holiday Story (Tie)
Crayola and Uber both made it to the top 10, with Crayola focusing on creativity as emotional healing and Uber highlighting moments when rides bring people home.
Strategic takeaway: Emotional arcs matter. Audiences respond strongly when ads move from negative to positive feelings. Service brands can achieve deep emotional impact when they focus on the human moments they enable.
Score: 53.4% of viewers likely to feel intense positive emotions.
Conclusion
The 2025 rankings reinforce one overarching truth: Emotion, not budget, not celebrities, not media spend, is what drives holiday advertising effectiveness. Disney won because it told the strongest story. Chevrolet and Subaru succeeded because they tapped deep cultural values. Publix and Lego connected through relatability and imagination. Teleflora and Crayola proved that inventive storytelling still wins. As we enter the final stretch of the holiday season, this year’s ranking offers one more important lesson: Even in an AI-driven media landscape, human emotion remains the ultimate competitive advantage. If you want your campaigns to break through the noise, holiday or otherwise, start with emotion, build with authenticity, and let story be your strategy.
Methodology
DAIVID evaluated 176 holiday campaigns, ranking them by the percentage of viewers predicted to feel intense positive emotions. They use a hybrid approach to compile this data, combining computer vision, audio analysis, facial coding, eye tracking, and tens of millions of human responses to predict emotional impact and brand lift. For marketers, this matters because emotion is the single most reliable predictor of effectiveness, and AI now makes emotional testing scalable. The 39 emotions DAIVID tracks align closely with modern behavioral science.