General Marketing
Last Holiday’s CTV Winners. What to Steal for This One.
Brands planning CTV for the holidays nearly doubled this year, 45% vs. 23%. The big screen is about to get crowded. Last holiday season's top-scoring CTV ads show what cut through, and most of it costs nothing but discipline.
Your holiday TV ad is about to have a lot more company.
Digiday+ Research surveyed 90 brand and retail pros about their holiday plans. Forty-five percent said they plan to run CTV and streaming ads this holiday season. Last year, it was 23%.
That's nearly double.
It also makes CTV the most-planned holiday tactic in the survey, ahead of brand experiences, which held the top spot last year.
Good news for the channel. Real news for your creative.
Because when nearly twice as many brands show up on the same big screen in the same six weeks, the household on the couch doesn't watch twice as many ads. They remember a few. Everyone else paid for the airtime and got forgotten.
So the question isn't whether to be on CTV this holiday. It's whether your ad is one of the few they remember.
The good news: we already have a cheat sheet.
The Scorecard (and an Honest Asterisk)
Every month, MarketCast ranks the TV ads that break through, on CTV and on linear TV, using its Brand Effect Pro measurement. Ads earn top marks for three things: breakthrough, brand linkage and message communication.
In plain English: did people notice it, did they know who it was for, and did they get the point?
Here's the asterisk. The rankings below are from last holiday season, the October and November 2025 lists. There's no ranking for this November yet. That's the point. Last season's winners are the playbook, and this season's ads are being finished right now.
Let's go to the tape.
Dick's Made the Nice List
In November 2025, Dick's Sporting Goods topped the CTV chart.
The spot packed in Paige Bueckers, Bryson DeChambeau, CeeDee Lamb and Draymond Green. MarketCast called it "playful" and "athlete-driven," said it "continued the brand's winning formula," and scored it 28% above the CTV norm.
Notice the two words that matter. Not "athlete-driven." *Playful.* And *continued.*
MarketCast didn't just credit the stars. It credited the tone and the consistency. Dick's had run this formula before, and it kept running it.
That's how brand linkage gets built. Do the same fun thing long enough and viewers know whose ad it is before the logo shows up. You can't buy that with one spot. You build it by not changing the formula every year.
Chewy Just Let the Pets Be Pets
Chewy was the other story of November 2025.
MarketCast called it "a consistent top performer" that "dominated once again," with five total slots across the CTV and linear lists. Chewy debuted three new holiday ads, each showing pets getting a little extra love for the season. The top one scored 20% above the CTV norm.
MarketCast's write-up doesn't mention a single celebrity. Just pets, and the thing every pet owner already feels in December, put on the biggest screen in the house.
And again: consistent. Chewy didn't win once. It kept showing up on the list.
Uber Eats and ALDI Read the Room
Back up to October 2025.
Uber Eats partnered with ALDI on a game-day snack delivery ad and earned 40% above the CTV norm. MarketCast gave the credit to "clear messaging and strong contextual timing that matched the energy of the season."
Read that one twice. Football season is when fans are already thinking about snacks, and the message was simple: game-day snacks, delivered.
Right message. Right moment. Right screen.
That's not a creative budget. That's a media plan and a creative brief that talked to each other.
Subaru Let the Proof Do the Talking
Same month, Subaru took what MarketCast called "a refreshingly simple strategy." It highlighted its high Consumer Reports ranking.
That was the whole strategy.
"By letting results take center stage," Subaru landed 31% above the CTV norm and a top-three spot.
Every brand has a version of this. A rating, a review count, an award, a guarantee. Plenty of brands bury it at the end of the spot, under the logo. Subaru put it center stage.
The Rest of the Leaderboard
Two more CTV winners from October 2025 worth a glance.
Liberty Mutual ran its "Interruption" ad in a short and a long version, following a man having a truly terrible day (except for his car insurance savings). The long-form spot hit 42% above the CTV norm and took the top CTV rank.
And Chime debuted with a holiday-griping ad starring Jason Momoa. MarketCast credited its "playful tone and timely theme." It scored 25% above the CTV norm.
So of the six CTV winners these two recaps call out, MarketCast's write-ups put famous faces at the center of two. The other four won with a story, a moment, a pet or a proof point.
That's good news if your holiday budget doesn't include Jason Momoa.
What to Steal (No Celebrity Required)
Here's the list I'd tape to the wall of every edit bay this month.
1. Get the brand in early. Brand linkage is one of the three things MarketCast scores. A great story that nobody connects to you is somebody else's ad. Show the product, the logo or the name in the opening seconds, then let the story run.
2. Say one thing. Uber Eats: game-day snacks, delivered. Subaru: Consumer Reports ranks us high. The winners didn't try to cram the whole brand into one spot. Pick the one message and cut everything else.
3. Match the moment. MarketCast credited "strong contextual timing" for Uber Eats' 40%. In December, the moment is the gift, the gathering, the cold night on the couch. Write for the week the ad runs, not the brand book.
4. Lead with your proof. If you have a rating, a review count or a guarantee, don't bury it. Subaru built its ad around one.
5. Make the offer impossible to miss. Holiday shoppers are deciding. Tell them what to do, where, and by when. A clear offer on a TV screen beats a clever line they can't act on.
6. Keep the formula. Dick's "continued" a winning formula. Chewy was "a consistent top performer." If last year's ad worked, give it a sequel, not a reboot. Familiar wins.
None of these need a celebrity budget. They need discipline in the script and the edit.
Then Don't Waste It on Bad Timing
A great ad still has to show up at the right time.
Ritual's chief growth officer, Laura Brodie, put it simply to Digiday: "Streaming is a really valid channel to invest in during holiday because consumption of that media spikes."
The audience is there. The question is when you reach them.
We wrote about this last month: plan your flight backward from your sales day, and space your exposures instead of cramming them into the last week. A breakthrough ad that shows up once on Black Friday weekend does less than a good ad that has been building memory since mid-November.
Last piece: the lesson in every winner above is fit, not volume. We saw the same thing with Apple's live sports ads. Fewer, better ads, in the right place, beat more ads everywhere.
The Final Take
More brands are bringing CTV to the holidays than last year. Nearly twice as many.
That's a vote of confidence in the big screen. It also means the household on the couch is about to see a lot of holiday ads, and remember a handful.
Last season's winners showed us how to be in that handful. A playful story people already know is yours. Pets getting extra love. Snacks on game day. One proof point, front and center.
None of it was luck. All of it can be copied.
So before your holiday spot goes out the door, run it through the list. Is the brand in early? Is there one message? Does it fit the week it airs? Is the proof up front? Is the offer clear? Does it build on what already worked?
If the answer is yes six times, you're not just on the big screen this holiday. You're the ad they remember.
That's how we build and place every spot at CS & Co., from the script to the flight plan to measuring the sales it drives. It's all part of the CS Method™. Want to know if your holiday ad is ready for the crowd? Find out if CTV is a fit.
Cory Poccia
CEO, CS & Co. Marketing Studio™