Biggest year ever for big game ads on YouTube

This year’s football season might be done and dusted, but the battle for most popular big game ad is still in play. To see how trends have played out in the days since the game, we took a look at the top trending videos, facts, and stats about big game ads on YouTube.

We found that viewership is growing faster than before - people have watched more big game ads and teasers in the first six weeks of 2015 than all 52 weeks of 2014. More than 7M hours of big game ads and teasers have been watched on YouTube, up from 6.3M hours for all of 2014.



Liam cinches his “Revenge”

One of the surprise hits this week was Clash of Clan’s “Revenge” ad featuring Liam Neeson. The spot gained over 20M views this week alone and now clocks in at more than 30M views, making it the most viewed big game ad on YouTube so far. Here’s a look at viewership of game day ads over time, from a report by Pixability:


(Source: Pixability report “Super Bowl Ads on YouTube,” February 5)

Beards and selfies infiltrate top trending ads
As expected, puppies and celebrities dominated the top trending ads on YouTube. But there were also some lesser-reported trends that spanned across the top game day ads. We found that:

• Half of the top 10 ads featured men with beards
• 21 different types of animals (animated or otherwise) made an appearance
• Two ads had people taking selfies
• Two ads featured no dialogue at all
• One: the total number of “Angry Neesons”

Here’s a list of the top trending game day ads on YouTube (based on views as of 2/6):



There are still three more days to cast your vote for your favorite ad of the game. Visit our AdBlitz channel to cast your ballot before voting ends on February 9 at 11:59 p.m. ET.

Kellen Spadafore, Insights at Google, recently watched “Super Bowl XLIX: Patriots vs. Seahawks highlights.”