Contextual-first leader GumGum has been appointed by Heineken UK to run a Christmas 2025 campaign for Birra Moretti, celebrating key themes of family, connection and joy. The festive special will use GumGum’s advanced contextual tech to celebrate Birra Moretti’s proud Italian heritage and charm – in a bid to anchor viewer attention during digital’s most competitive season.
The upcoming campaign – which builds on the success of Heineken and GumGum’s collaboration last Christmas – will use state-of-the-art tools to deliver emotionally rich storytelling. In a recent GumGum study of 3,000 consumers across six global markets, including the UK, U.S. and Germany, 67% said Christmas makes them feel joyful, and 37% reported feeling nostalgic. Birra Moretti aims to capture this warmth, using a combination of rich media creatives placed in high-attention content environments.
It follows GumGum’s Christmas 2024 campaign for Heineken, in which GumGum tracked Attention Time, its proprietary metric tracking seconds across each contextual impression. The purpose was to place Birra Moretti ads in the most relevant environments for its target audience.
The ads secured an average viewable Attention Time of 2.9 seconds, up nearly 20% on the GumGum benchmark – rising to 4 seconds for desktop formats (a 50% increase). They also performed 67% better for Attention Time in family and relationships content compared to the context average for those categories.
Further independent research from measurement company On Device showed strong uplifts in consideration, favourability and purchase intent of between +10 to +13 points among both weekly lager drinkers, and men, exposed to the ads. This chimes with Birra Moretti’s target audience known as “James”, denoting 25-44 year olds with a premium lifestyle who value authenticity and spending time with loved ones.
“Last year’s Christmas campaign for Birra Moretti used GumGum’s Mindset Graph to optimise the contextual placement of the brand’s creatives – and the results were compelling,” says Jess Aylett, Head of Sales, UK & International at GumGum. “This approach discovers the exact content categories that over-index for attention within Birra Moretti’s target audience. And the really smart part is that we can use those learnings to inform future strategies.
“For example, we know that Heineken could see an increase in Attention Time of up to 60% by focusing on the contextual categories that are proven to resonate most with Moretti consumers. These include family and relationships, and movie content. This is really precise, actionable intelligence that we can use to leverage an even stronger sense of audience connection.”
This year’s Moretti campaign will use a broadly similar strategy to 2024, but with a renewed focus on the emotional moments with the highest impact on attention. For example, creative elements will put more emphasis on traditional seasonal imagery, to convey a sense of familial warmth and togetherness.
In addition, the 2025 assets will be more creatively ambitious than last year’s static units, featuring an approach that experiments with movement and flair. This includes testing out animations such as snow gusts, for an extra layer of nostalgia and depth. The campaign will be optimised for multiple channels at once, including dynamic media that adapts consistently across desktop, mobile and social media channels.
As with last year, the campaign will use GumGum’s advanced contextual targeting to place these creatives alongside premium inventory in the most relevant content environments. The goal is to measure Attention Time on every impression generated, to ensure the ads surface in the moments where Birra Moretti’s target audience, “James” (meaning 25-44 year old premium lager drinkers), is most engaged.
At the same time, the strategy will integrate findings from Moretti’s previous Christmas campaign – setting the stage for higher Attention Times, and festive ads that are even more successful in finding their mark.
“Heineken is delighted to be partnering with GumGum once again, following the excellent results of last year’s Moretti Christmas campaign,” says Daniel Glynn, Media Buying Lead at The Heineken Group. “From rich creative execution and sophisticated contextual alignment, the 2025 strategy has all the ingredients needed to command attention, highlighting Moretti as the premium lager of choice this Christmas. Above all, the campaign delivers a joyful, heartfelt tribute to family time and togetherness – values that are at the core of Birra Moretti as a brand.”
The 2025 Birra Moretti campaign runs until 31 December 2025.
