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Google's YouTube Releases Cannes To Cannes Lions 2014 Leaderboard

Selfies have a lot to say, especially when they come from basketball star Kobe Bryant and football icon Lionel Messi. Google on Monday released its Canes to Cannes YouTube Ads Leaderboard celebrating the most popular global video ads since last year's festival. The top ten videos highlight ads about sports, charity, love, tackling misogyny, and taking a look back.

The Cannes to Cannes YouTube Ads Leaderboard is a list of the top 10 most popular video ads globally from March 1, 2013 to April 30, 2014. The ranking is determined using some of YouTube’s strongest signals of viewer choice -- number of views and percentage of organic views versus paid views.

Increasingly, YouTube sees a trend toward advertising becoming content. Selfies have become increasingly popular. The site also notes many videos in this year's Leaderboard winners feature global celebrities. Turkish Airline's Kobe v Messi: The Selfie ad tops the 2014 list at No. 1 with 137,471,078 views at the time the clips were judged. 

Bryant and Messi race across the world to find the best places to take selfie photos armed with cameras on smartphone and access to Turkish Airlines flights to fly most places worldwide, with each one continually trying to outdo the other.

The top ten have several things in common. Every ad was at least 1 minute long, and the average view duration across was 1:29. There were a total of 620 million views and 924 million minutes watched.

The YouTube highlight for 2013 follows with 96,471,511 views; and Wren, about 81 million views. Volvo Trucks, Budweiser, Nike Football, Pantene Philippines, Google, Save the Children UK, and CornettoTR round out the top

Millennials access online video more often than other demographics -- about 48% more time than the typical Internet user -- especially on channels like YouTube, Netflix and Hulu. This group not only spends considerably more time with online video content, but can be reached much more efficiently, per comScore.

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