As we gear up for the 2026 holiday season*, the ghosts of campaigns past are still haunting us. For anyone in need of a little inspiration — or just feeling nosy — we analyzed the holiday ad campaigns of three different companies, each with their own distinct approach to their November through December marketing. We’ll start off with Coca-Cola, whose perennially festive ads were so effective they helped to popularize Santa Clause way back in the 1930s. Next, we’ll unpack beauty conglomerate L’Oreal’s strategy, which was moderate, strategic, and buoyed by Julia Roberts’ megawatt smile. Finally, we perform a retrospective on Hershey’s approach and find that, despite the company’s reputation as a Halloween kingpin, it had a few tricks up its sleeve for Christmas as well. 

* “Holiday season” refers to the period of November 1 - December 31. 

Coca-Cola: Big Spender

Coca-Cola (the parent company to dozens of popular US beverage brands, from Smart Water to Sprite), more than doubled its ad spend (+110%) for the 2025 holiday season, with impressions surging 91% in tandem. We can gauge the company’s priorities by looking at which channels it chose to boost as fall turned to winter. 

The trend is clear: of the platforms where Coca-Cola dedicated upwards of $1M in total spend, the biggest increases heading into November went to Linear TV (+494%), Snapchat (+281%), TikTok (+127%), and YouTube (+111%) — all video-based platforms which allowed them to create high-budget, cinematic spots. 

Coca-Cola’s top new creative of the holiday season was a 30-second Christmas-themed video spot that aired on Linear TV (including Fox, NBC, ABC, CBS, and ABC) as well as OTT streaming platforms. There’s no denying the festive charm of this production. Think lights, wreaths, christmas trees, the iconic Coca-Cola polar bear, and even a sled. This one creative accounted for 8.9% of the advertisers’ spend during the holiday season, with daily impressions peaking at over 42 million on December 28 — three days after Christmas. Zooming in, we can see that December spend alone was about 2.2X November spend, showing an increased presence closer to prime shopping windows. 

L’Oreal: Moderate and Strategic 

L’Oreal increased its holiday ad spend by a more modest amount (+18%), but put a higher percentage of budget towards one favored creative, which aired on Linear TV. The 15-second fragrance ad starring America’s Sweetheart (Julia Roberts) accounted for over 12% of the advertisers’ 2025 holiday campaign spend. Launched in partnership with Macy’s, the Lancome ad’s daily impressions peaked at 13M on November 12th, nine days after its debut. 

Similarly to Coca-Cola, L’Oreal also boosted spend on TikTok (+72%) and YouTube (54%) for the holiday season, but its biggest increase actually went to LinkedIn, where the advertiser upped its budget by 83% for a campaign centered around the company’s workplace culture and social justice initiatives. 

Moving from November into December, L’Oreal’s spend remained relatively study, but the advertiser reapportioned some of its investments from Linear TV into social — a big fragrance push on cable ahead of Black Friday, followed by a renewed focus on Facebook and Pinterest ads closer to the moment consumers tend to buy last minute gifts.  

Hershey’s: Slow and Steady

Not every brand ramped up for the holidays. Given Hershey’s status as a Halloween candy MVP, its spend actually dropped (-32%) going from September-October into November-December. However, the advertiser’s year-over-year (YoY) holiday spend remained relatively stable, showing consistency in how much budget it directs to its cold-weather sales push. And while spend did shrink by about 9% YoY, impressions only fell 2%, meaning Hershey’s got more bang for their buck in 2025 than the year prior. 

Within the season, the chocolate magnate made strategic decisions about where and when to allocate its resources, with its December ad spend 25% higher than November’s, led by boosts to Snapchat (+90%) and YouTube (+74%). The advertiser’s top two newly-launched ads over the holiday season were actually not holiday-focused, but rather targeting football fans in need of game day snacks. The third most-expensive creative, accounting for ~4% of total budget, was a 6-second Instagram video: “Santa wants a crispy, creamy KIT KAT® break this year.”

Interested in more digital advertising insights just like these? Check out our industry-defining report, State of Digital Advertising 2026.