Photo Credit: Forbes
Each year, YouTube crowns the top 10 video ads of the past year–not for 2013, but for the 12-month period ending close to the Cannes Lions advertising conference, which starts June 15 this year.
This year, the top 10 ads from Mar. 1, 2013, to April 30 of this year on the Google video site got a total of 620 million views, comprising 924 million minutes watched.
What does “top” mean? There’s an algorithm for that, of course: The ranking is determined by what YouTube terms the strongest indicators of consumer choice, a key theme of YouTube’s pitch to advertisers: the number of views of the ad and the percentage of “organic” or unpaid views versus paid views. Topping the leaderboard, with far and away the most views at more than 137 million, was Turkish Airlines’ selfie contest between Los Angeles Lakers basketball star Kobe Bryant and Argentine footballer Lionel Messi.
What’s most notable about the ads is that, like the best television ads, most of them tell a story, but also that they’re noticeably longer than TV spots, clocking in at an average of almost a minute and a half. So much for people’s supposedly minute attention spans online. (Admittedly, YouTube’s own 5:46 ad surely skewed the average, but some others such as Nike’s also top four minutes.)
Of course, a few of them, at least, are TV ads, an indication that increasingly, YouTube and TV feed off each other (or I suppose if you’re a network or cable executive, you might figure YouTube is mooching off the popularity of TV ads).
Anyway, to get you started in case you’ve been under a rock for the past year, here’s the top one:
And here’s the full list with links:
1. Turkish Airlines’ Kobi Vs. Messi
4. Volvo Trucks’ Epic Split with Jean-Claude Van Damme
5. Budweiser’s Puppy Love Super Bowl commercial
6. Nike Football’s Winner Stays
7. Pantene Philippines Labels Against Women
8. Google’s Zeitgeist 2013 in review
9. Save The Children UK’s Most Shocking Second A Day
10. Cornetto’s music video by Yalin
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