The long arm of the NFL’s Super Bowl reached across YouTube ads throughout 2019.
Six of the top 10 most-viewed ads on YouTube this year originated as Super Bowl LIII ads that aired in February. According to YouTube, that shows that marketers were able to extend the return on investment of those ads as viewers continued to watch them for the rest of the year.
Amazon took No. 1 on YouTube’s ranking with its “Not Everything Makes the Cut” Alexa ad for the Super Bowl, which featured celebrities like Harrison Ford, Forest Whitaker and the “Broad City” stars Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson using fake Alexa-enabled products (like a dog collar that lets Ford’s pooch order a pallet of dog chow). That was followed by Hyundai USA’s Super Bowl spot and Procter & Gamble’s controversial Gillette ad “We Believe: The Best Men Can Be,” which urged men to fight against bullying, fighting, discrimination and sexual harassment.
Other top-ranked Super Bowl ads on YouTube included the Doritos spot with Chance the Rapper and Backstreet Boys; Sarah Jessica Parker and Jeff Bridges changing up their drink orders for Stella Artois; and the NFL’s ad for its 100-year anniversary featuring nearly 50 players scrimmaging at a gala dinner.
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Tech giant Apple scored the No. 4 position with its ad introducing the iPhone 11 in September, while Audi’s “Spider-Man”-themed “Science Fair” spot came in at No. 7.
The total watch time for all videos on the top 10 list is around 275 million minutes, with the total number of views about 230 million, as measured through Jan. 1 to Dec. 1, 2019. The rankings on the YouTube Ads Leaderboard are determined by an algorithm that factors in organic and paid views, watch time and audience retention (how much of a video people watched).
2019 YouTube Ads Leaderboard by Global Views (Jan. 1-Dec. 1, 2019):