• by Ross Fadner , August 6, 2012

The most surprising thing about Unruly Media’s Global Ads Chart for July, which measures the ads that received the most shares during the month, is that only one of the ads in the Top 10 can be directly tied to the 2012 London Olympics. That would be P&G’s “Best Job” spot, which was shared nearly 47,000 times in July, despite being released in April.

The lack of Olympics-related ad shares in the viral top ten must surely add up to a miss for the world’s top brands. After all, an estimated 4 billion people are expected to watch this year’s games. There aren’t many global events that have so much mass appeal, and P&G’s “Best Job” spot was only the 9^th most shared ad in July.

Top spot, with a whopping 1.78 million shares, went to DC Shoes’ Gymkhana 5, which features world rally champ Ken Block performing stunts around San Francisco. The spot, released July 9^th, generated 500,000 shares in its first 24 hours alone.

Gymkhana 5 was always going to be a massive hit. This is the fifth installment of Block’s Gymkhana stunt series, which launched in 2008. To date, it has racked up more than 140 million views and 7 million shares. Two of the series feature in the top 5 most shared ads of all time. And all the videos are longer than 7 minutes. Gymkhana 5 is already the 12^th most shared ad of all time. 

Other ads making the Top 5 were a pair of spoofs of Carly Rae Jepson’s hit single “Call Me Maybe”: Sesame Street Workshop’s “Share It Maybe” (653, 574 shares), in which the lovable Cookie Monster implores the listener to share their cookies with him, and Abercrombie & Fitch’s take on “Call Me Maybe” (399,286 shares), which showcases the apparel brand’s shirtless male models lip syncing to the pop hit. Rounding out the Top 5 are Spanish bank Som Sabadell’s take on the flashmob (360,737 shares) and the Obama for America TV spot “Firms” (132,362 shares).