US: The top retail advertisers during the 2022 holiday season

The Christmas ads are in and counted for with brands of all types having their chance to get in the holiday spirit and win over consumers with their creative messaging.

Of course, some advertisers did better than others at garnering and keeping the attention of consumers. In this analysis, we look at retailers to see which brands came out on top in terms of advertising awareness this holiday season.

The data comes from YouGov BrandIndex -– a daily brand tracker that measures consumer perceptions towards brands and companies—and looks at Ad Awareness for major household names such as Walmart, Target, Nike, Old Navy and Skechers between November 1st and December 25th.

Ad Awareness is a measurement of whether consumers have seen an ad for a brand within the last two weeks.

Walmart was the top retailer in terms of Ad Awareness this past holiday season. The retail giant led all other general retailers, with more than two in five (45.2%) US consumers saying they saw an ad for the brand between the beginning of November and Christmas.

One of Walmart’s holiday commercials this year was a montage of the diverse ways Americans celebrate the holidays. The ad showed that the brand could be a part of everyone’s year-end celebrations regardless of faith or background.

Target was another big winner this year and 38.8% of consumers say they noticed an ad for the brand during the holiday season. This year, Target’s advertising spot focused on being the “holiday happy place” where people can find inspiration, feel a sense of belonging and easily do their shopping.

According to YouGov BrandIndex, both Walmart’s and Target’s Ad Awareness steadily increased as the holiday season approached Black Friday and Cyber Monday and continued to surge as we neared Christmas. The brand’s Ad Awareness score grew by 8.5 points and 7.4points, respectively.

The two brands also ranked highest in terms of Consideration during the holiday period, with 56.6% of shoppers saying they would consider buying from Walmart and 40.3% saying the same about Target.

Kohl’s (27.3%), Walgreens (23.6%) and CVS (21.5%) were the other top performers this holiday season, scoring roughly a quarter of the nation’s awareness with their respective marketing campaigns.

Make smarter business decisions with better intelligence. Understand exactly what your audience is thinking by leveraging our panel of 20 million+ members. Speak with us today.

Discover more retail content here.

To read YouGov’s latest intelligence on the retail sector explore here.

To receive monthly insights about the retail industry register here.

Want to run your own research? Run a survey now

Photo by Fabio Bracht on Unsplash