System1 Reveals Australia’s Top 10 Ads of 2025
Leading creative effectiveness platform System1 has released its first annual ranking of Australia’s favourite ads, with creatives from Tourism Australia, Australian Lamb and AAMI leading the way.
The 2025 ranking is based on scores from System1’s Test Your Ad platform, which maps emotional responses to an advert to predict its commercial impact. Creatives which evoke strong positive feelings in audiences are more likely to drive long-term brand building and sales. Adverts are scored on a 1.0-Star to 5.9-Star scale and just 1% of creatives earn the coveted 5-Stars or higher.
The average Star Rating for Australian TV adverts is 2.4, predicting modest long-term brand building potential, and accounts for just under half of all global advertising.
A common thread running through the top 10 ads is their focus on humour and cultural assets. The creatives combine witty dialogue, famous faces, and clever references to national culture to produce adverts that feel inherently Australian and instil audiences with a sense of belonging. Tennis player Nick Kyrgios, race car drivers Greg Murphy and Marcus Ambrose, and Olympic breakdancer Rachael Gunn all make an appearance in the top 10 list.
“If there’s one thing Aussies absolutely nail in advertising, it’s humour. It’s the single most effective ingredient for making ads memorable, attention-grabbing and genuinely engaging, and Australians use it unapologetically,” said Jon Evans, chief consumer officer at System1 and host of the Uncensored CMO podcast.
“The top 10 ads we tested in 2025 are packed with wit, exaggeration, cultural tropes and parody, full of character and unmistakably Aussie,” Jon continued. “Insurance, car parts and auto might be some of the most “neutral” categories on System1’s Test Your Ad Competitive Edge platform, but these campaigns are anything but dull; they’re quirky, human and cut through their categories with ease.”
Jon also said he’s looking forward to the humorous hospitality of Australia’s creative industry at Cairns Crocodiles 2026, where he will headline.
Australia’s top 10 ads of 2025
The ads are ranked by Star Rating (brand-building potential), with Spike Rating (short-term sales potential) the tiebreaker for ads with the same Star Rating.
