• February 5, 2009

YouTube unveiled today the top five winners of this year's YouTube Ad Blitz, a contest that lets users vote for their favorite Super Bowl ads.

The Doritos "Free Doritos" ad took the No. 1 spot with more than 4,700 "favorites." Searches for the "Doritos" rose 4,300%, from one day before, to the day after the Super Bowl. E*Trade "Singing Babies" ranked No. 2, followed by CareerBuilder.com, Pepsi Max-"I'm Good," and Doritos: "Power of the Crunch."

This year, the brands of the more successful ads relied on search campaigns to tease spots prior to the Super Bowl. The top five ads, calculated by the number of votes rather than views, promoted their video with YouTube Sponsored Video, a new YouTube ad platform that enables advertisers to spots against popular search terms.

Clicks on the "thumbs up" icon for each ad determined the winner. The contest registered more than 2.6 million votes in three days--about three times the votes in one week during the contest last year--and more than 21 million views.--Laurie Sullivan