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Case study

The sweet spot: Where Hershey's becomes part of play

May 26, 2026
Hershey’s Holiday Bells campaign appears in Candy Crush Saga through immersive, rewarded ad formats, each designed to celebrate the season and encourage player interaction.

40M+

Impressions

4.3%

Click-Through-Rate

2.5X

Purchase intent with Rewarded

For holiday season 2025, Hershey’s delivered strong full-funnel impact, with significant gains in ad recall, awareness, consideration, and purchase intent, alongside sustained, repeat engagement and high‑volume clicks driven by the new Rewarded Portal.

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Every holiday season brings a surge of familiar advertising.

In this busy time of year, Hershey’s saw an opportunity for Holiday Bells to show up differently and become part of the short, everyday mobile moments that shape how players savor the season.

To bring its 35-year tradition into those moments, Hershey’s partnered with Xbox Media Solutions to introduce Holiday Bells directly into Candy Crush Saga gameplay through immersive, rewarded experiences that invited players to engage rather than just watch.

The campaign elevated Hershey’s Holiday Bells into Candy Crush’s most attentive moments, guiding players from awareness to intent. A Sponsored Gift delivered a warm, high-impact first impression. Next, Rewarded Video reintroduced the iconic jingle in an opt-in environment built for attention. A custom Candy-fied Playables invited players to interact with the brand, turning recognition into participation.

 

Opt-in Rewarded Video of Hershey’s Holiday Bells, alongside a Candy-fied Playable where players interact with the brand through a candy-themed experience that turns awareness into active engagement.

At the heart of the experience was Rewarded Portal, a new product purpose-built for Hershey's to standout as an added holiday touchpoint on the player’s gameplay journey. Taking the form of an animated Hershey’s Kiss, Rewarded Portal was embedded directly into the level screen—the most frequented surface in the game. Designed to feel native to gameplay, it lived within the core player journey, rather than around it. With a single tap, players unlocked a branded Holiday Bells moment—a deliberate, player-initiated interaction—that drove brand affinity and earned players a powerful reward in exchange for their time.

This combination paid off with a deepened emotional connection and improved overall ad recall.

 

Three-step view of Rewarded Portal: an animated Hershey’s Kiss appears natively in the Candy Crush level screen, player taps to activate a Holiday Bells experience, then receives an in‑game reward, all within the core gameplay loop.

Together, Hershey's and Xbox Media Solutions delivered strong full-funnel impact. Overall exposure resulted in +55 points in Ad Recall, +11 points in Top-of-Mind Awareness, +13 points in Consideration, and +7 points in Purchase Intent.

Among exposed players, brand impact deepened across every metric, delivering 1.2x higher Ad Recall lift, 2.3x stronger Top-of-Mind Awareness lift, 2.1x stronger Consideration lift, and 2.5x stronger Purchase Intent lift. These results underscore the power of sustained, player-initiated engagement within the core gameplay experience.

Brand Lift:

  • +55 points in Ad Recall 
    • 1.2x lift in Ad Recall with Rewarded Portal
  • +11 points in Top-of-Mind Awareness 
    • 2.3x lift in Top-of-Mind Awareness with Rewarded Portal
  • +13 points in Consideration 
    • 2.1x lift in Consideration with Rewarded Portal
  • +7 points in Purchase Intent 
    • 2.5x lift in Purchase Intent with Rewarded Portal

 

Bar chart showing strong full-funnel brand lift for Hershey’s: +55 points ad recall, +11 points top-of-mind awareness, +13 points consideration, +7 points purchase intent, with Rewarded Portal driving 1.2x to 2.5x higher lifts across all metrics.

 

From Play to Performance

With Rewarded Portal driving 40M+ impressions, 1.67M clicks, and a 4.32% CTR, players engaged 1.7x daily, reinforcing its leading role as a repeatable, high-value touchpoint.

 

"We were so pleased with the impact of this partnership. Candy Crush gave the iconic KISSES Holiday Bells a fresh way to show up during the season, and players responded with the kind of engagement and brand connection every marketer hopes for. It felt joyful, natural, and unmistakably Hershey’s.”

— Vinny Rinaldi, VP of Consumer Connections at The Hershey Company

Brands looking to drive meaningful brand impact during high‑noise seasonal moments can embed their messaging directly into the gameplay environments where attention is already focused.

With Xbox Media Solutions, advertisers can:

  • Reach players during high‑attention gameplay moments

    Introduce brand messaging through opt‑in rewarded experiences that players actively choose to engage with, creating a clear value exchange for their time.

  • Move beyond awareness into participation

    Use interactive formats such as Playables and Rewarded Portals to turn familiar brand assets into player‑initiated experiences that deepen engagement.

  • Integrate seamlessly into the core player journey

    Leverage native in‑game surfaces to position brand touchpoints within gameplay itself, increasing visibility without disrupting the play experience.

  • Create repeatable engagement opportunities

    Advertisers can keep users interested and engaged by reaching them at multiple moments in their session journey with different types of experiences, all designed for the moment they're in.

By aligning creative with gameplay‑native formats, brands can extend existing campaigns into interactive environments that reward attention and encourage ongoing engagement.

- Rewarded Portal

- Playables

- Rewarded Video

Want to reach millions of players when they’re paying attention and ready to engage? Connect with Xbox Media Solutions to get your brand in the game.

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