John Lewis has won the UK's annual Christmas ad battle, according to new research by DAIVID, The global creative effectiveness platform used its AI-powered platform to find the Xmas 2024 ads that generated the most intense levels of positivity.
John Lewis’ "The Gifting Hour,” tells the story of two sisters and a magical quest to find the perfect gift, topped DAIVID’s Christmas ad chart after 55.5% of viewers felt an intense positive response to the ad.
The final instalment in Saatchi & Saatchi's trilogy of ads for the UK retailer, which includes "The Window" and "Give Knowingly", "The Gifting Hour" is the most emotionally engaging Xmas ad from the retailer for six years.
In second spot is M&S Food’s magical "The Journey", featuring national treasure Dawn French. Amazon’s "Midnight Opus" shows how small thoughtful acts can bring people together, Etsy’s "Waldo Anthem" and Lidl’s "Magical Christmas" complete the top 5.
Other brands to appear in DAIVID’s top 10 include Tesco, Disney, and TK Maxx. Ads from Asda and Sainsbury’s just missed out. All of Coca-Cola’s AI-generated versions of its famous "Holidays Are Coming" commercial generated intense positive emotions that were below the industry average.
Top 10 Most Emotionally Engaging Christmas ads 2024
| Rank | Brand | Campaign | % of viewers likely to feel intense positive emotions |
| 1. | John Lewis | “The Gifting Hour” | 55.5% |
| 2. | M&S | “The Journey” | 55.4% |
| 3. | Amazon | “Midnight Opus” | 55.2% |
| 4. | Etsy | “Waldo Anthem” | 54.6% |
| 5. | Lidl | “A Magical Christmas” | 53.7% |
| 6. | Tesco | “Helping to Feed Your Xmas Spirit” | 53.4% |
| 7. | O2 | “Snowing SIMs” | 53.2% |
| 8. | Disney | “The Boy and The Octopus” | 53.1% |
| 9. | FatFace | “FatFace Christmas” | 53.0% |
| 10. | TK Maxx | “Festive Farm” | 52.9% |
Ian Forrester, CEO and founder at DAIVID, said: "The John Lewis Xmas ad is always going to attract a wide range of opinions, but our data certainly suggests that it’s a worthy winner among this year’s Christmas ads. The ad certainly packs an emotional punch, attracting twice the levels of warmth and joy as the average ad. I think the key to that is that it’s rooted in a single story of two sisters, which adds emotional depth and makes it feel more sincere than the saccharine flavour of some of the other campaigns this year.
"Like a lot of festive ads this year, it also attracted intense feelings of nostalgia that were almost twice the UK average. Getting people to look back over their own experiences and relationships is a really powerful way for marketers to access a broad range of feelings in a short space of time. It certainly had me reaching for the tissues. Other standouts from our festive top 10 are M&S Food’s 'The Journey', which is the only ad in our top 10 that features a celebrity [Dawn French], and Tesco’s heartbreaking 'Helping To Find Your Christmas Spirit', which generated a very wide range of emotions."
DAIVID’s Christmas chart was compiled using its AI-powered platform, DAIVID Self-Serve. Trained using tens of millions of human responses to ads, the new solution predicts the emotions an ad will generate, and its likely impact on brand and business metrics – enabling advertisers to measure the effectiveness of their ad campaigns at scale. AI models are built by combining facial coding, eye tracking and survey data with computer vision and computer listening APIs.
Altogether, 90 Christmas ads were included in the study. Ads were ranked by the percentage of people predicted to feel intense positive emotions to the content. DAIVID tests for 39 different emotions. The strength of emotions people feel are ranked from 1-10, with 8-10 considered 'intense'. Data for the chart was compiled at 7am on November 15, 2024.
To find out more about DAIVID Self-Serve – available across multiple formats and channels – email, webringthewhy@daivid.co