Official YouTube Blog: ads

Old Spice, Red Bull, and Bears Oh My! A look back at the last five years of ads on YouTube

Wednesday, April 8, 2015

Old Spice Manepic splitthousand splitsfour of the top 10top five trending ads
1) DC Shoes: “Ken Block’s Gymkhana THREE, Part 2; Ultimate Playground; l’Autodrome, France
2) Old Spice: The Man Your Man Could Smell Likewith celebrities like Alyssa Milano
3) Red Bull: Danny MacAskill - Way Back Home
4) Old Spice: Questions
5) Tippex: NSFW. A hunter shoots a bear.123Iconic Ad Moments on YouTube playlist.

David Kagan, Product Marketing Manager, recently watched "Volvo LifePaint."1. Pixability Top 100 Brands report, March 2015; compares data from Feb 2014 to Feb 2015. Top 100 brands defined by Interbrand Top 100 Global Brands list.2. YouTube global data, 2014. Top 100 brands defined by Interbrand Top 100 Global Brands list.3. YouTube global data, 2013 vs. 2014

And this year’s top ads on YouTube are...

Tuesday, December 9, 2014

The ForceOld Spice man

Nike Football: Winner Stays. ft. Ronaldo, Neymar Jr., Rooney, Ibrahimović, Iniesta & more

Nike Football: The Last Game ft. Ronaldo, Neymar Jr., Rooney, Zlatan, Iniesta & more

Budweiser Super Bowl XLVIII Commercial -- "Puppy Love"

Always #LikeAGirl

Devil Baby Attack

Duracell: Trust Your Power - NFL's Derrick Coleman, Seattle Seahawks

Galaxy Note 4 -- Then And Now

P&G Thank You, Mom | Pick Them Back Up | Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games

Global Be(er) Responsible Day | “Friends Are Waiting” | Budweiser

Heineken | Routine Interruptions | The Payphone with Fred Armisen

Kurt Hugo SchneiderScott BradleeTaylor DavisMike RelmMichael ThurberTop TrailersTop Brand/Creator CollaborationsTop Sports Ads of 2014Think with GoogleAlyson Yaffe, YouTube Marketing, recently watched “Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens Official Teaser Trailer #1 (2015) - J.J. Abrams Movie HD.”

How November Will Be Won: By the Numbers

Saturday, July 28, 2012

Did you know that 1/3 of people who see a campaign ad on YouTube have not seen it on TV? We recently shared this on our Politics & Elections Blog. You can read an example of the types of things we talk about on that blog below. For more information about marketing a campaign on YouTube visit our YouTube for politicians website.
Earlier this year, we introduced “Four Screens to Victory”, a framework for political campaigns that outlined how Google can help make the web work for candidates and issues groups up and down the ballot. With these digital platforms, campaigns can build their organizations, define the issues, persuade the electorate and - importantly - get the vote out and win the moment that matters in November on Election Day.

More than 80% of eligible voters are online

Similarly, 83% of mobile phone owners are registered voters

1 out of every 3 likely voters in November say that they didn’t watch tv in the past week

Voters are spending more media time on their mobile devices than newspapers & magazines combined

(Click the infographic below to get a larger version)

“Four Screens to Victory” site
David Kaufman, Google Politics & Elections Team, recently watched "i like ike"

Helping every business play big on YouTube

Sunday, April 22, 2012

Rokenbok Toy Companyfirst videoone videoGoogle AdWords for video is now available to allGoogle AdWords for video

Find the right audience: AdWords for video provides a range of options to reach the right audience. For example, you can promote your video by keyword to appear in YouTube search results, or you can choose to show your ad against content your customers are most interested in - such as sports or music. Connect with your audience on YouTube and the Google Display Network, which includes millions of websites. AdWords for video links to your YouTube account so you can easily start a video campaign with your existing videos.

Measure the effectiveness of your spend: On average, we’ve found that YouTube video ads drive a 20 percent increase in traffic to your website and a 5 percent increase in searches for your business (Google Campaign Insights, 2011). With AdWords for video you can find out how viewers are engaging with your brand during and after they watch your ad. You can see how many viewers watched your entire video, visited your website, stayed on your channel to watch another video, or subscribed to your channel, after viewing your ad.

Only pay for engaged views: With TrueView video ads you only pay when viewers choose to watch your ad so you aren’t charged when viewers skip your ad if they aren’t interested or have already seen your video. This means your ad budget is focused on viewers interested in your video. By displaying a call-to-action overlay on your video you can talk about a sale or specific offer to your viewers, share more information about your business, or drive traffic to your website.

$50 million in free advertising.free credit hereAdvertiser Playbook and support.YouTube Advertiser PlaybookMy Business Storyyour first videoYouTube Ambassador programHear their storiesget startedYouTube for MarketersBaljeet Singh, YouTube group product manager, recently watched “Guitar Lesson from Spinal Tap's Nigel Tufnel.”

Infographic: YouTube Ad Blitz post-game report

Friday, March 16, 2012

YouTube's Ad Blitz channel

check outLexi Turpack, YouTube interactive programs analyst, recently watched ‘Vitalic - Poney Part 1.’

Motorsports brands kick into high gear on YouTube

Monday, March 5, 2012

videosDaytona 500RevZillamotorcycle gearGoProracer’s eye viewCEO Nicholas WoodmanThe Richard Petty Driving ExperienceSummer of SpeedBaljeet Singh, group product manager on video monetization at Google, recently watched “Team Hot Wheels - The Yellow Driver's World Record Jump”

And the YouTube Ad Blitz winners are...

Friday, February 17, 2012

YouTube Ad Blitzyou voted M&M’S “Just My Shell” commercial as your favorite adChrysler Group “Halftime in America”Bud Light “Rescue Dog”Chevy Silverado “2012”Doritos “Man's Best Friend”Give me the stats!

The most popular ads drove the majority of views - 65 percent of video views came from the top ten commercials.

Google searches related to [Super Bowl commercials] peaked on Monday, but continued through the rest of the week.

More than 32 percent  of all mobile votes occurred on Tablet devices, our first year running Ad Blitz on a tablet-optimized channel.

YouTube homepageMike Yapp, director, YouTube Creative Content, recently watched “The Jeremy Lin Show at MSG!”

How to shape up your video marketing strategy in 2012

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

vow to get in shapeYouTubeSix Pack ShortcutsInsane Home Fat LossYouTube TrueView video adsFlex BeltTRXAdrianne CurryDrew BreesGoogle AdWords for videoBaljeet Singh, group product manager, recently watched “S*&t Silicon Valley Says.”

Ads Worth Spreading 2.0 - get your entries in!

Thursday, December 22, 2011

With only two weeks left for submissions to Ads Worth Spreading 2.0, TED is asking for your support in their search for innovation, ingenuity and intelligence in advertising. The dream behind the initiative is to find companies that want to communicate ideas to their consumers in the same way that TED wants to communicate with its audience.

What makes ideas powerful is that they have a life of their own; an idea can reset someone’s worldview and even begin a domino effect as they pass it on to friends. Ads Worth Spreading is TED’s initiative to recognize and reward innovation, ingenuity and intelligence in advertising -- the ads that people want to see, and share with their friends.

One of our favorite entries so far has been Chipotle's "Back to the Start" campaign, which champions the idea of a return to small, sustainable farming.

Another lighthearted piece we love comes from UK brand Cravendale. "Cats With Thumbs" has the kind of creativity and humor that inspires people to share an ad with friends.

YouTube has been helping to promote and showcase the Ads Worth Spreading entries online with a dedicated channel at http://www.youtube.com/adsworthspreading. Visit the channel and upload your video, or simply add your existing YouTube video to the channel before December 31, 2011. Agencies, brands, producers and individuals are invited to submit their best work of 2011. There is no fee to enter work. Submissions must be: less than five (5) minutes in length, created and aired between January 2011 and December 2011, and entered by an authorized agency, brand or producer. We look forward to seeing the submissions continue to come in!

Ronda Carnegie, Head of Global Partnerships at TED, recently watched, “Jane McGonigal: Gaming can make a better world.”

Ads that entertain: YouTube’s top spots of 2011

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Editor’s note: Yesterday, we looked back on the “most viewed” YouTube videos of 2011. Today, we invited Advertising Age’s Michael Learmonth to reflect on the most viewed video ads of the year.

We always knew people liked to watch the ads. At least some ads, like the great ones people talk about after the Super Bowl. Then YouTube came along in 2005 and brought with it the notion that ads can be great content that earn their way onto screens of all types, spread by consumers who vote, share, like, comment, blog, plus-one, or even create response videos or spoofs.

YouTube is the ultimate meritocracy for video, and advertisers are adapting to this world by creating content that people want to share. It’s no surprise, for example, that among the top-10 most-watched ads on YouTube in 2011 are two Super Bowl ads.

Most watched video ads of the year (eliminating music videos and trailers):
1. VW - The Force
2. T-Mobile - Royal Wedding
3. Chrysler - Imported From Detroit
4. DC Shoes - Ken Block's Gymkhana Four: The Hollywood Megamercial
5. smartwater - Jennifer Aniston goes viral
6. Team Hot Wheels - The Yellow Driver's World Record Jump
7. Old Spice - Scent Vacation
8. Apple - Introducing Siri on iPhone 4S
9. Samsung - Unleash Your Fingers
10. adidas - D Rose: adiZero Rose 2 The Bull

What is surprising is that the majority of YouTube’s top “ads” of 2011 (seems strange to call them that) never appeared on traditional TV at all.

Videos like T-Mobile’s Royal Wedding, itself a spoof of the JK Wedding Dance, were made for the web and made to amuse, entertain, and to be passed around, as are mini-movies like DC Shoe’s Gymkhana Four, stunts like Hot Wheel’s record jump, and Old Spice’s “Scent Vacation.”

Even the two Super Bowl ads making the list, Chrysler and Volkswagen, were part of elaborate campaigns made to live significant lives on the web. In the past, advertisers treated their Super Bowl spots like state secrets, but Volkswagen posted “The Force” on YouTube two weeks before the Super Bowl last year, and had 10 million views before the game began. Chrysler took the opposite approach, but created a video four times the length of a typical TV ad, perfect for extended watching on the web after the game.

For brands, creating great content—advertainment, if you will—isn’t just for big TV events like the Super Bowl anymore. Increasingly, advertisers and their agencies are focusing on the content and the strategy, and letting that content distribute itself. That doesn’t mean they aren’t doing traditional advertising. Indeed all of these campaigns were backed up by significant spending to seed and promote these videos on YouTube and elsewhere. But paid media only gets you so far. In the end, it doesn’t matter if they paid $3 million for 30-seconds in the Super Bowl or much less to get the conversation started. In the end, it’s the content that counts.

Michael Learmonth, Senior Editor for Advertising Age, recently watched, “Sesame Street: Smell Like a Monster.”

What makes an ad worth spreading? TED to recognize 10 prime examples

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Today we bring you a guest post from Ronda Carnegie, Head of Global Partnerships at TED, a nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Carnegie explains how TED and YouTube are teaming up for the second year to present a challenge called 'Ads Worth Spreading.'Ads Worth SpreadingShow & Tellchannel on YouTubeAds Worth Spreading channelbefore December 31, 2011Ronda Carnegie, Head of Global Partnerships at TED, recently watched "Matt Cutts: Try something new for 30 days."

Update on YouTube’s Promoted Videos

Monday, August 8, 2011

Update: As of December 1st, 2011, you will start to see Promoted Videos referred to as TrueView in-search and TrueView in-display.

In November of 2008, we began to dabble with a feature that you and advertisers could use to make videos easier to find, since at the time you were uploading 13 hours of video every minute. The feature was Sponsored Videos, and we soon changed the name to what you know today as Promoted Videos. Flash forward to 2011—we're talking about 48 hours of video uploaded every minute, and Promoted Videos have now reached one billion views globally.

Whatever your search, companies and creators across all genres are using Promoted Videos to bring content to your attention. Maybe you’re a little self-conscious about your breath and Orabrush can help you out using Promoted Videos to demonstrate their tongue cleaners. Perhaps you’re a skater and Original Skateboards are bringing you the latest in longboarding technology. Or maybe you’re seeking the infinite grilling wisdom of the BBQGuys, and their Promoted Videos around the Superbowl can bring you the perfect smoked brisket recipes.

If you're interested in learning more about Promoted Videos, we recently announced some updates so hop on over to the Inside AdWords blog for the full details.

Jonathan Goldman, YouTube Software Engineer, recently watched “The Grand Rapids Lip Dub (New World Record).”

Ads Worth Spreading

Friday, March 18, 2011

People use YouTube to create original content that will connect, inform and inspire others across the globe, and we encourage advertisers to do the same. It is our goal to recognize and give praise when brands create content that people seek out, love and share with others. TED, the organization devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading, announced a similar mission late last year with their inaugural Ads Worth Spreading challenge, designed to solicit best-in-class ads that raise the bar, elevate the craft and invent new forms of engagement, both online and in general.

Beginning in early January, TED and YouTube began the call for submissions. In less than a month, nearly 1,000 ads were submitted from around the world, varying in length from 30 seconds to five minutes. The winners were selected by a diverse judging panel made up of 24 artists, business people and thought leaders, including Robert Wong from Google’s Creative Lab and YouTube creative champion Terrence Kelleman of Dynomighty. One-third of the entries came from outside of the U.S., across a wide variety of brands and causes.

In early March, Chris Anderson announced the 10 winners of the challenge from the stage of the annual TED conference in Long Beach, California. The winners represent some of the most creative, compelling and out-of-the-box executions of the past year. They embody a new paradigm for advertising creative, pushing the boundaries on what will move audiences and spur action by embracing longer-form storytelling as advertising.

Video is a powerful medium for spreading ideas. Our mission--like TED’s--is supported in part by advertising. Any great video--whether original content or advertising--should make you think, make you respond, and make you want to share. We hope to continue to see more enthusiasm and more passion in online advertising, solidifying it as the medium that elevates the craft and practice of brands spreading ideas.

The 10 winning Ads Worth Spreading are:

Chrysler: "Born of Fire" (Wieden+Kennedy)
The Nike Foundation: “Girl Effect, The Clock is Ticking” (Wieden+Kennedy)
Dulux: “Dulux Walls” (Euro RSCG London)
Intel: “The Chase” (Venables Bell & Partners)
Nokia: “The World’s Smallest Stop-Motion Character Animation” (Wieden + Kennedy London)
Hornbach and HEIMAT Berlin: “Infinite House” (@radical.media)
The Topsy Foundation: “Selinah” (Ogilvy Johannesburg)
Batelco: “Infinity” (FP7/DXB, Bahrain)
Savory Institute: “Changing Our Future” (Foresight Multimedia)
Target: “Kaleidoscopic Fashion Spectacular” (Mother NY and Legs Media)

The winning videos can be seen today on the YouTube homepage, and you can also take a look at behind-the-scenes commentary on YouTube Show & Tell, our resource for the best creative marketing on YouTube.

Mark Sabec, Product Marketing Manager, who recently watched “Rory Sutherland: Life lessons from an ad man”

Good Work – Enjoy the spotlight at the Cannes Lions Festival for a good cause

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

We know creative people on YouTube love turning an idea into a brilliant production. We also know they want their work to matter.

With this in mind, we’ve partnered with the 58th Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity on Good Work, a new program that gives creative professionals the opportunity to use their skills to make a difference and gain recognition for their work. Learn more in this video:

Through Good Work, nonprofits from all over the world can submit a brief for a video ad promoting their cause. These organizations often lack the resources and time to create a truly great ad for their cause -- and this is where you can help. Pick a brief you want to work on from the Good Work briefs gallery and make an ad for that organization. Your ad can be inspirational, thought-provoking, funny, or serious -- just make sure it’s also innovative and compulsively watchable.

If you succeed, you might be strutting your stuff at this year’s Cannes Festival - five talented people will win a trip to Cannes and have their work showcased there. Could it be you?

The deadline to submit your entry is May 9, 2011. A jury of top industry experts chaired by Craig Davis, Chief Creative Officer Publicis Mojo and founder of Brandkarma, will announce the winners on May 21, 2011.

Supriya Sharma, Product Marketing Manager, recently watched “WaterAid Cracker Challenge.”

Ad Blitz winner revealed

Friday, February 18, 2011

It's been about two weeks since the Super Bowl aired, but our ears are still ringing from the noise of advertisers jockeying for position in Ad Blitz, YouTube’s contest to find the best Super Bowl ad. Last Sunday, we added Super Bowl spots to the Ad Blitz gallery as they aired on gameday, and people could come to the channel (or even hop on their mobile devices) to vote for their favorites.

We’ve tabulated the final votes, and are pleased to announce that the winner is...

It was a great Super Bowl for mobile this year, with over 3.5 million views of the Ad Blitz channel happening on mobile devices. We received over 2.7 million votes, and in the first 30 hours after the game aired, commercials were viewed 47 million times.

As the winner of Ad Blitz, Chrysler will be featured in the YouTube masthead all day today. Hats off to them for being voted the top spot by the YouTube community.

Suzie Reider, Advertising Director Display, recently watched, “Steelers versus Packers - Super Bowl XLV and ESPN.”

Partners, please join us for the first virtual meetup

Friday, January 14, 2011

YouTube channelYouTube channelDate: Time:Web address: www.youtube.com/YouTube#YTPartnerMargaret Healy, Strategic Partner Manager, recently watched “Kauai - The Lost World - Canon 5D Mark II.”

TrueView Video Ads give viewers choice and control over ads

Thursday, December 2, 2010

advertisers start to make ads viewers want to watchTrueView Video Ads

InsideAdWords blogPhil Farhi, Senior Product Manager, recently watched “Danny MacAskill - Way Back Home”.

Tricking and treating with Disney this Halloween

Monday, October 25, 2010

We’d like to welcome today’s guest blogger, Annjanette Isorda, Senior Manager of New Media Business Development at the Walt Disney Company. Annjanette works with Disney Consumer Products, a division that extends the Disney brand to merchandise ranging from apparel and toys to books, magazines and even food. Today, she shares her experiences on how they use their Disney Living YouTube Channel to engage fans and communicate about holiday promotions.

The Disney Living channel was born in March 2009 when we realized that YouTube could provide a great way to answer the growing demand for entertainment and information on Disney products – everything from bridal fashion shows featuring gowns inspired by our Disney Princesses to sneak peeks of our latest toys and tech gadgets. We’ve found that YouTube has broad appeal and, unlike virtually any other channel, YouTube videos allow us to tell stories that we couldn’t convey in print or other online media. We create original content that you can’t see anywhere else for YouTube fans and the active blogger community.

As we go into the holidays, YouTube has emerged as one of the best ways for us to engage directly with a wide audience. For example, Halloween is an especially fun holiday for us at Disney. To make this year’s festivities unique, we created fun activities for the family on YouTube. We produced a "Disney Store 30 Costumes in 30 Seconds" YouTube Halloween Sweepstakes and have also set up a Halloween Dress Rehearsal Party for families to show off outfits in person (and receive free prizes!). The Disney Living channel helps us easily bridge the online and offline worlds.

Additionally, Disney Living is tricking and treating YouTubers to three scary movie spoofs, inspired by the flicks The Shining, The Ring, & The Sixth Sense. These Ghoulish Greetings are short e-greetings made to delight and surprise our audience. We hope fans will have a laugh and be inspired to share them with family and friends and participate in our Halloween contest with a video response of your own. We’ll choose five lucky winners after Halloween to win a $100 gift card to the Disney Store. We will continue to produce content like this for our YouTube channel because it is a powerful platform that allows us to create value for our subscribers and audience.

Finally, our last advice to anyone else considering building a presence on YouTube: connect it to your other social marketing efforts. We always connect our content to our Facebook fan page and share it in our tweets from Twitter. We’ve promoted the videos to the YouTube community as well to help connect more people to some of our most popular content. We have found using a mix of social media and paid advertising helps us reach both core Disney fans and newcomers.

We’re genuinely excited about engaging with our fans on YouTube and carrying on the Disney tradition of inspirational storytelling. Stay tuned — there will be more YouTube fun as we move into this year’s holiday season!

Jacques Hebert, Google AdWords Account Manager, recently watched “Disney Halloween Spoof: Ghoulish Greeting #3.”

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video is worth a million

Monday, October 11, 2010

Editors note: Today’s guest bloggers are Troy Olson, Digital Advertising Manager, and Jeff Loquist, Search Marketing Manager, for ShoppersChoice.com. ShoppersChoice.com owns and operates a family of web stores with a wide selection of products, from barbecue grills and accessories to patio sets.

We sell everything from home furniture and fireplaces to kitchen cookware, but our true passion is barbecuing and grills. We’re in BBQ country, where people are fanatical about barbecuing and smoking. We’ve found that the best way to connect with customers is to provide them with great videos – grill reviews, how-tos, and recipes – presented on our branded YouTube channel, YouTube.com/BBQGuys.

We started with instructional videos to address customer service. Then our attitude toward video morphed when our CEO was on a business trip 1,000 miles away from home and was recognized as the “Barbecue Guy.” We saw how great YouTube could be for reaching many people at once and conveying our company image. Our important performance indicator is our relationship with viewers. It excites us when we see comments such as, ‘Great recipe! I tried it a few days back, loved it.’

In 2009, we brought on Chef Tony. He knows Cajun food and has a gregarious personality that our viewers love. We get hundreds of thousands of views whether we’re showing how to smoke a brisket

or how to make honey-glazed sweet potatoes

We want our customers to love our grills, and the way we do it is to give them recipes that make them proud and happy with the results they can achieve.

Through Promoted Videos, there have been almost 100,000 views on our YouTube channel and more than 15 million impressions of our brand name – all at the most competitive cost-per-click you will find anywhere online. Our campaign is easily managed in the Google Adwords interface. Every tool we need is there to grow quickly and manage easily our video efforts. So far this year, we’ve had over 2,200 visitors to our BBQGuys.com site from YouTube. We’ve also seen a significant increase in subscribers across all our social media channels since we started using YouTube.

Online video advertising is central to our business. For this past August, our revenue was up 48%. Our videos were viewed 94,000 times during that month alone. Overall traffic to BBQGuys.com is up 20% from last year.

We’ve been so successful on YouTube that we are now planning to extend our YouTube presence to our SportsmanGuys brand and beyond.

For us, video is our secret sauce. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video is worth a million!

Serena Satyasai, Marketing, recently watched “Homemade Pizza Dough”

Your questions about ads and advertising answered

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

YouTube channelModeratorBuilding an audience on YouTubeMia Quagliarello, Product Marketing Manager, recently watched “Star Wars Tai Chi.”

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