Brands Diversify YouTube Ads, Rack Up 102.8 Million Views

YouTube's Ad Leaderboard took a turn in March, racking up 166.2 million minutes watched for the top 10, up 8% compared with February. Overall, the ads earned 102.8 million views. The most popular videos on Google's online video site transitioned from focusing on the Super Bowl to celebrating life's diversities. 

In February, six of the top 10 ads on the Leaderboard aired during the big Super Bowl game, many returning from prior months. In March 2015, the most popular ads came from new faces.

Clean and Clear’s "See the Real Me" campaign took the No. 10 spot with a story about a transgender girl being her true self in March 2015. At No. 9, Valspar engages with audiences through a unique experiment giving special glasses to people who are color blind so they can see color for the first time.

Counting backward, GoPro at No. 8 with GoPro: Didga the Skateboarding Cat had 3.4 million views; followed by No. 7 with #DearMe, What Advice Would You Give Your Younger Self?, 4.4 million views;

The GEICO advertisement with 5.8 million views makes a debut on the Ads Leaderboard at No. 6. The family: Unsippable Geico ad demonstrates the unique use of a skippable TrueView advertisement in which the advertiser doesn't pay for the ad if the view skips the ad within five seconds. By the time the ad reaches six seconds, a voiceover says "You can't skip this Geico ad because it's already over."

From 10 seconds through 1:04, the ad is freeze-framed except for a huge dog that jumps on the kitchen table and eats the family's food as they remain frozen in time.

Rounding at the top five, viewers chose to watch Welcome to the YouTube Music Awards 2015 about 7.7 million times. The Samsung Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge with Design story at 9.2 million views took the No. 4 spot.

The Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 edge, Official Introduction, with 29.5 million views came in at No. 3, Durex - #Connect - Official with 36.7 million views at No. 2; and Diversity & Inclusion – Love Has No Labels with 47.6 million views took the No. 1 spot for March 2015 on the YouTube Ad Leaderboard.

3 comments about "Brands Diversify YouTube Ads, Rack Up 102.8 Million Views".
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  1. SC Roddy from WP Carey , April 14, 2015 at 2:37 a.m.

    I find this post very interesting as online ads have become omnipresent on video streaming sites. Now marketers are making ads specifically for the online platform, rather than using TV commercials online. GEICO did this particularly well with the "unskippable" ad. I'm surprised it didn't receive more views. I constantly find myself itching to skip through wehatever movie trailer, etc. they throw at you, but the GEICO ad is actually pretty funny.

    More and more, I find myself watching clips of live TV shows online rather than actually watching the live shows. This allows you to get the most compelling parts on demand, almost like sports highlights. Definitely an interesting trend. This, I'm sure has spawned a tremendous growth in ad sales online, which will in turn spwan more of these creative ads designed specifically for an online audience. 

  2. Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, April 14, 2015 at 8:43 a.m.

    When one considers that the population of the U.S. is well over 310 million, attaining 166  million ad view minutes in a month isn't all that huge ----is it? On a per-capits basis, that works out to roughly one minute every two days.

  3. John Grono from GAP Research, April 14, 2015 at 9:58 a.m.

    I was thinking the same thing Ed.   I've looked at some Australian viewing data - and remember the US is almost 15 times the population of Australia.

    Each day we view around 4.35 billion minutes of TV.   The commercial stations are limited to 13 minutes per hour, the cable company averages around half of that as does one of the government funded channels while the other government channel carries no advertising.   Weighting them by their viewing share, the average hour carries between 8-9 minutes of advertising - or around 15% of the air time.   However, we need to discount this by about 10% for ad-skipping in time-shifted viewing.

    15% of 4.35 billion minutes is around 652 million minutes, knock off 10% for DVR ad-skipping and we have 587m minutes.   Let's call it 550 million minutes to also allow for people leaving the room during live-viewing ad-breaks.

    Put another way, a month's worth of the 166 million Youtube ad minutes (global or US domestic?) represents a little over 7 hrs of regular TV viewing ad-consumption in Australia.

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