Morrisons and Sainsbury's sit jointly at the top of System1's first ranking of the 2026 UK Christmas advertising season, published today, with both supermarkets scoring the maximum 5.9 Stars and an identical Spike Rating of 1.68. Grocers took the first four places and seven of the 12 spots on the list, which System1 compiled from its own consumer testing and describes as early rankings "as of November 12th."

In Short

System1, a company that tests ads with consumers, today published its early list of the 12 best-scoring UK Christmas ads, led by Morrisons and Sainsbury's, with eight ads at its top score of 5.9 Stars. Supermarkets hold seven of the 12 places, so the ranking mostly reflects how UK grocers' festive campaigns tested with consumers before any sales results are in. The scores are System1's prediction of how well each ad will build the brand and drive short-term sales, not measured sales results, and the order can still change as more ads launch.

The early leaderboard

System1 ranks the ads by Star Rating, which it says predicts long-term brand-building potential. Where two ads share a Star Rating, the Spike Rating, which System1 says predicts short-term sales potential, separates them. The full list, according to System1:

Rank Advertiser Ad Stars Spike
1 Morrisons Made Just Right 5.9 1.68
2 Sainsbury's Sainsbury's Big Delivery 5.9 1.68
3 M&S The Home of Christmas 5.9 1.58
4 Aldi Will it be a paw-fect Christmas 5.9 1.51
5 Thatchers Saving Tasting Time 5.9 1.37
6 Disney The Invisible Horse 5.9 1.34
7 Barbour Barbour x Wallace & Gromit 5.9 1.32
8 National Lottery Believe 5.9 0.98
9 Coca-Cola Holidays Are Coming (AI) 5.7 1.66
10 Lidl Lidl Christmas Everybody 5.7 1.61
11 Tesco The Wrong Address 5.7 1.44
12 Waitrose The Perfect Gift 2 (6 min) 5.6 1.65

The range on the headline measure is narrow. Just 0.3 Stars separate first place from twelfth, and every ad on the list sits above 5.5. The Spike column is far more spread out, running from 0.98 for the National Lottery to 1.68 for the two leaders, a gap of 0.70.

One detail in the table is not explained. Morrisons and Sainsbury's share both scores to two decimal places, yet System1 lists Morrisons first. The stated method, Stars first and Spike second, cannot separate them, and the release gives no third criterion. The order happens to be alphabetical, though System1 does not say that is the rule; its own headline treats the two as joint leaders.

How System1 scores an ad

System1 runs the exercise every year. According to the company, it tests major Christmas campaigns through Test Your Ad, its commercial testing platform, "measuring real consumers' emotional responses to predict commercial effectiveness." Each ad receives two numbers.

Star Rating

The Star Rating runs from 1.0 to 5.9 and, according to System1, reflects an ad's potential to drive long-term brand growth. That is the territory of brand equity: the memories and associations that make a brand easier to choose months or years after an ad has aired. System1 says only around 1% of ads achieve a 5-Star Rating across the year. Every one of the 12 Christmas ads clears that bar, and eight sit at the ceiling.

How unusual is that? The release frames the concentration of top scores as "particularly impressive," but the comparison has limits. The 1% figure covers all ads System1 tests across a year, while the Christmas list shows only the 12 best performers from a set of seasonal campaigns whose total size the release does not give. High-budget festive films from the country's largest advertisers are not a random sample of the ads that pass through the platform.

Spike Rating

The Spike Rating, according to System1, predicts short-term sales impact, the near-term sales lift an ad might produce. The release does not state the scale for Spike or what value counts as average. Earlier System1 results give a rough guide. When System1 tested a marathon-themed Burger King outdoor ad in April, it scored 1.12 on Spike with a custom sample of fitness-interested 18-to-44-year-olds, a level System1 rated as good, and 0.79 with a nationally representative sample, against a UK outdoor category average of 0.96. Those benchmarks apply to static outdoor ads, not Christmas video, so they place the National Lottery's 0.98 and the leaders' 1.68 on a map without fixing them to it.

What the release does not disclose

The release does not give a sample size, the test dates, the number of Christmas ads tested or the scores of ads outside the top 12. In earlier System1 tests covered by PPC Land, the company used a nationally representative sample of 150 respondents and its FaceTrace emotion measure. Today's release does not say whether the Christmas tests followed the same design.

The version tested matters too. Waitrose's entry is labeled as the six-minute cut of The Perfect Gift 2. The release does not say which cut was tested for the other 11 ads, or whether shorter television edits would score differently.

The scores remain predictions. None of the 12 campaigns has completed its run, and the release presents no sales, footfall or brand-tracking data to show how the ads performed in market. The leaderboard also works as a showcase for the product that produced it. Test Your Ad is the service System1 sells to brands, and the release closes with a description of that platform alongside its sister products, Test Your Innovation and Test Your Brand. According to System1, its database holds more than 100,000 ads and it tests creative in 81 markets.

Supermarkets hold seven places

According to System1, "Grocery retailers are once again setting the standard for Christmas advertising." Morrisons, Sainsbury's, M&S and Aldi fill the top four, and Lidl, Tesco and Waitrose take three of the last four places. System1 counts M&S among the supermarkets, though the retailer also sells clothing and homeware.

The picture is less one-sided when the two scores are separated. Four of the eight maximum Star Ratings went to advertisers that are not grocers: Thatchers, Disney, Barbour and the National Lottery. On PPC Land's calculation from the published figures, the seven supermarket ads average 5.80 Stars, while the five other ads average 5.86. The supermarkets' advantage shows up on the short-term measure instead. Their ads average 1.59 on Spike, against 1.33 for the rest of the list.

Ranked by Spike alone, the order would shift sharply. Morrisons and Sainsbury's would stay on top at 1.68, but Coca-Cola (1.66) would move from ninth to third and Waitrose (1.65) from twelfth to fourth. The National Lottery, eighth on Stars, would fall to last with the only Spike score below 1.0.

System1 singles out Waitrose on this point. Although it "sits twelfth on Star Rating, its 1.65 Spike Rating is among the strongest in the leaderboard, highlighting its potential to drive short-term sales," according to the release.

Not every large Christmas advertiser appears. John Lewis and Asda are absent from the 12, and the release does not say whether their 2026 campaigns had been tested by November 12 or where they placed if they had.

Brand ads under the food rules

The supermarket results arrive in the first Christmas season with the UK's less healthy food advertising restrictions in force by law. The industry began applying the rules voluntarily on October 1, 2025, ahead of a statutory start on January 5, 2026, as PPC Land reported when IAB UK, the Advertising Association, ISBA and the IPA launched an awareness campaign. Under them, TV and on-demand ads for identifiable less healthy products cannot run before the 9pm watershed, and paid online ads for those products cannot run at any time, while brand advertising that shows no such product is exempt.

System1 has already scored food advertising under the new regime. In March, Lindt topped its UK Easter rankings with 5.9 Stars in a season reshaped by the HFSS (high in fat, salt or sugar) rules. Today's release does not mention the restrictions, and it does not say whether any of the 12 Christmas ads was edited to comply with them.

Familiar characters and returning casts

System1 identifies familiarity as "a defining theme of this year's leaderboard," pointing to "the continued success of familiar characters, established storytelling and distinctive brand assets." Recurring characters are one route to salience, the likelihood that a brand comes to mind at the moment of purchase, and several of this year's leaders lean on them.

Sainsbury's has brought back Roald Dahl's BFG for a third consecutive Christmas, according to System1, and Aldi's Kevin the Carrot "continues his remarkable festive run." Waitrose has built on its 2025 festive romcom, reuniting Keira Knightley and Joe Wilkinson for a six-minute sequel. Morrisons' entry, Made Just Right, features a character System1 refers to as Daddy Bear.

Lidl takes a different kind of familiar material. Its ad, Lidl Christmas Everybody, is a reworking of Slade's festive classic starring Shaun Williamson, "better known as Barry from EastEnders," according to System1. Tesco's The Wrong Address completes the supermarket group; the release gives no further detail on its content.

AI, stop-motion and puppetry

The leaderboard places one AI-made ad among a cluster of handcrafted ones. Coca-Cola's entry is an "AI-created rendition" of Holidays Are Coming, the truck-led campaign the company has run for decades. It scores 5.7 Stars and a Spike of 1.66, the third-highest Spike on the list. System1 presents the result as evidence of "the enduring value of distinctive brand assets" rather than of the production method.

At the other end of the craft spectrum, two of the eight maximum scores went to work by Aardman, the Bristol animation studio. Barbour's latest collaboration with Aardman brings Wallace & Gromit back "for a stop-motion Christmas adventure," according to System1. Thatchers scored 5.9 Stars with Saving Tasting Time, which System1 describes as the cider maker's first-ever Christmas advert. Produced with Aardman, it combines traditional stop-motion animation and puppetry with CGI.

System1's reading is that "both traditional creative techniques and newer technologies can play a role in festive advertising, with distinctive storytelling and emotional connection remaining central to success." The release does not compare AI-made and conventionally produced ads beyond the single Coca-Cola entry, so the list says little about AI production in general.

Disney's The Invisible Horse ranks sixth with 5.9 Stars and a Spike of 1.34. Disney released the short, directed by Dougal Wilson, on November 9 to open a holiday campaign covering its parks, streaming services, networks and consumer products. The National Lottery's Believe also reached the maximum Star Rating, though with the lowest Spike in the top 12.

What System1 says the leaders share

Andrew Tindall, Chief Growth Officer, Advertising, at System1, linked the top performers through their characters. "If the early leaders tell us anything, it's that Brits love an underdog. We're drawn to the unsung heroes and unlikely characters who bring a little magic, mischief or humour to the everyday," he said. "Whether it's Daddy Bear for Morrisons, the BFG for Sainsbury's, Kevin the Carrot for Aldi or Joe Wilkinson chasing after Keira Knightley, we all love someone to root for. Someone we can see a bit of ourselves in, or someone we'd quite like to see ourselves with (I'm looking at you, M&S fans)."

He also pushed back on the attention AI receives in creative circles. "There's plenty of noise about AI and the next big creative breakthrough, but we risk overcomplicating what makes a great Christmas ad. The formula is hardly a secret. Take a leaf out of Richard Curtis's book: give us a character to care about, a problem to overcome and, above all, a happy ending. Make us laugh, make us feel something, and give us a reason to remember who made it."

Why the rankings matter to the marketing industry

Christmas campaigns are among the most closely watched ads of the UK year, and System1's release frames the season as "the battle for Britain's most effective Christmas advert." Its list is an early verdict, and a forecast rather than a result: the scores predict effects that have not yet happened.

The split between the two ratings mirrors a long-running debate over how to value advertising. Google's 2025 study with Nielsen, Kantar and others found that marketing returns in months five to 24 match those of the first four months, which is the kind of delayed effect the Star Rating tries to anticipate. A TransUnion and MMA Global white paper argued that standard measurement tools may undervalue brand marketing's sales contribution by as much as 83%. Pre-launch tests such as System1's sit at the start of that chain, before any of those longer-term effects can be observed.

System1 has been expanding the product behind the rankings. In April, the company added AI-generated summaries and a beta predictive measurement tool to Test Your Ad, as competition among creative measurement providers intensified. In July, it was one of seven creative measurement firms that joined the AU ecosystem run by attention measurement company Adelaide, alongside Ipsos, Neurons, CreativeX, DAIVID, Sundogs and Adverteyes.

The AI question raised in Tindall's comments also has data behind it. Research from FreeWheel found that 48% of US media buyers assume viewers find AI-made creative off-putting, while only 10% of US adults surveyed said they disliked the AI-made ads they had seen. A WARC study commissioned by TikTok found that 88% of marketers report higher creative volume from generative AI but only 45% report a significant gain in quality. Coca-Cola's 5.7 Stars adds one data point to that debate: an AI-made ad that tested well, built on a campaign idea that predates the technology by decades.

The rankings also land in a weak market for UK television advertising. ITV said on November 11 that it expects its total advertising revenue to fall by around 5% to 10% in the fourth quarter, the period that includes the run-up to Christmas, and cited the less healthy food regulations among the causes. Across all media, the UK advertising market grew 6.4% to £46.7 billion in 2025, but Google, Meta and Amazon took two of every three pounds, according to the Advertising Association and WARC. Every ad on System1's list is linked to a YouTube upload in the release, a reminder that festive films now circulate online as well as on television.

System1 calls today's list early, so the order can change as further campaigns are tested. The release does not say when the next update will follow.

Timeline

Summary

Who: System1, the creative testing company, and the 12 advertisers on its early Christmas leaderboard: Morrisons, Sainsbury's, M&S, Aldi, Thatchers, Disney, Barbour, the National Lottery, Coca-Cola, Lidl, Tesco and Waitrose. Andrew Tindall, System1's Chief Growth Officer, Advertising, is quoted.

What: System1 ranked 12 UK Christmas ads using its Test Your Ad platform. Eight scored the maximum 5.9 Stars, Morrisons and Sainsbury's tied on both 5.9 Stars and a 1.68 Spike Rating, and supermarkets took seven of the 12 places. The scores are System1's predictions of long-term brand growth and short-term sales impact, based on consumers' emotional responses, not measured campaign results.

When: The early rankings were published today, November 12, 2026, and reflect results as of that date.

Where: The United Kingdom. System1 tests ads in 81 markets, but this leaderboard covers UK Christmas campaigns.

Why: Christmas is the year's largest creative showcase for UK retailers, and System1 uses the leaderboard to argue that familiar characters, consistent storytelling and emotional connection drive effectiveness. The list is also a public demonstration of the testing service System1 sells, and the release leaves out sample sizes, the number of ads tested and how the tie at the top was broken.