The Brands and Agencies Behind the Most Popular Video Ads on YouTube Source: Brands and Agencies Behind the Most Popular Ads on YouTube

At the 2015 IAB MIXX Conference, YouTube (along with other sponsors) ran a print ad in the print version of the program. (How retro, right? And for an interactive advertising conference about “the emergence of a mind-blowing, beautiful, consumer-centric digital world,” no less!).

But, the print ad contained information that I hadn't seen before: The Top Creative Agencies, the Top Brands, and the Top Media Agencies based on the YouTube Ads Leaderboards. Now, ReelSEO frequently focuses on the most popular ads created that month, but it’s time to take a closer look at the agencies and brands behind them.

Why is it worth knowing which creative agencies have multiple ads in the year-to-date standings? Well, success on YouTube is hard. That’s why there are so many one-hit wonders. In fact, I once taught a YouTube marketing workshop in London and was surprised to discover that the creators of one of the previous year’s viral videos were in the back of the room. I quipped, “You should be up here teaching this class.” And they looked awkwardly at each other and then quietly explained, “We’re not sure what we did right. And now our client expects us to be able do it again. So, we came here hoping to learn the best practices and strategies for creating great content.”

So, if I were in charge of advertising at a top brand, I’d want to invite a couple of the creative agencies that have produced multiple hits to participate in my next agency review. And if I were in charge of an agency that wasn’t producing multiple hits, then I’d want to find out what brand of whiskey the people at the top creative agencies are drinking and send a barrel to my creative director. 

YouTube: Top Creative Agencies

Since the YouTube’s print ad went into production, two more YouTube Ads Leaderboards have been published – for August and September 2015. So, year-to-date, the top creative agency with 7 appearances is Wieden+Kennedy, an independent, creatively driven advertising agency. Wieden+Kennedy’s work in 2015 includes “FIFA 16 - Play Beautiful” which ranked #1 on YouTube in September with 13.2 million views.

The agency’s work also includes: “Better For It – Inner Thoughts,” which ranked #3 in April with 8.4 million views; “The Dunk to End All Dunks,” which ranked #4 in August with 9.2 million views; “The Internetest safety video on the Internet,” which ranked #5 in May with 9.2 million views; “Old Spice | And So It Begins” which ranked #6 in August with 10.3 million views. Yes, I know some of the ads don’t seemed to be in the right order, but the ranking is determined by an algorithm that factors in paid views, organic views, and how much of a video people watched. And the monthly rankings aren’t always reflected in the views a video now has year-to-date.

In second place with 6 appearances in the YouTube Ads Leaderboard year-to-date is Barton F. Graf 

(BFG), an independent, fully integrated, creative agency. BFG’s work includes “Clash of Clans: Revenge” which ranked #1 in the YouTube Ads Leaderboard in February 2015. The video, featuring movie legend Liam Neeson, currently has 75.6 million views.

And BFG created five ads that ended up on the YouTube Ads Leaderboard in May 2015, including “Clash of Clans: Ride of the Hog Riders” with 72.8 million views at #1, “Clash of Clans: Shocking Moves” with 32.0 million views at #2, and “Clash of Clans: Balloon Parade” with 26.3 million views at #3.

In third place with five appearances in the YouTube Ads Leaderboard year-to-date is GoPro Original Productions, an enabler of some of today’s most engaging content. Their top performing ad is “GoPro HERO4 Session” which ranked #3 in July with 14 million views. GoPro Original Productions also created: “GoPro: Owl Dance-Off,” which ranked #9 in February with 7.1 million views; “GoPro: Didga the Skateboarding Cat,” which ranked #8 in March with 3.9 million views; and “GoPro: Twiggy the Waterskiing Squirrel,” which ranked #8 in July with 2.2 million views.

Top Brands on YouTube

YouTube also congratulated to top brands featured in the most popular ads on YouTube this year. Tied for first place with five appearances apiece, they are GoPro and Apple.

We’ve already seen the list of GoPro ads. But, let’s take a look at Apple’s most popular ads. The most popular one is “iPhone 6s - The Only Thing That's Changed Is…,” which ranked #6 in September with 5.8 million views.

Other popular ads from Apple include: “iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus – Reveal,” which ranked #10 in September with 2.2 million views; “iPhone - Hardware & Software,” which ranked #9 in July with 1.3 million views; and “Shot on iPhone 6 by Antoine D.,” which ranked #6 in June with 1.3 million views.

Tied for third place with four appearances apiece are Clash of Clans and Samsung Mobile. We’ve already seen the list of Clash of Clans ads. So, let’s take a look at Samsung Mobile’s most popular ads. The most popular one is “Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 edge” which ranked #3 in

Other popular ads from Samsung Mobile include “It's Not a Phone, It's a Galaxy: Wireless Charging,” which ranked #4 in September with 9.9 million views; and “Galaxy S 6 v 6: Edge Display,” which ranked #4 in June with 1.4 million views.

What does the list of top brands tell us? Well, more than half of YouTube views come from mobile devices. The number of hours people spent watching videos on mobile is up 100% year-over-year. And on mobile, the average viewing session on YouTube is now more than 40 minutes, up more than 50% year-over-year. So, are you shocked, shocked to find that the iPhone 6 and Samsung Galaxy S6 are among the top brands on YouTube?

Top Media Agencies on YouTube

YouTube’s print ad also congratulated the top media agencies. The top media agency with 10 appearances in the YouTube Ads Leaderboards was OMD, an integrated communications agency. In second place with six appearances is Starcom MediaVest Group, a globally recognized home for media creativity. Tied for third place with five appearances apiece are Performics, the global performance marketing agency, and UM, a global media agency that fuses curiosity and creativity to unlock competitive advantage for brands through media.

Now, some people may think that you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to buy paid views on YouTube. But, they would be wrong. It takes a brilliant media strategist to leverage two TrueView formats – in-stream and in-display – and half a dozen targeting methods – demographic groups, keywords, interests, topics, placements, and video remarketing. And don’t get me started on optimizing your video campaign by improving your bidding, adding a call-to-action overlay, or using advanced campaign settings. Hey, I know the beauty of TrueView ads is you pay only when someone chooses to watch your video. But, if you target the wrong audience at the wrong price, then nothing good happens, either.

So, there you have it: The YouTube advertising dream team. Yes, we tend to notice the great content first. But, when someone demonstrates that they aren’t just a one-hit wonder, then it’s worth finding out what brand of whiskey they’re drinking.

Brands embrace $60B worth of web advertising

Brand advertisers have taken notice of new livestreaming platforms like Periscope, and they are trying to use them to cut through the noise of digital marketing.

This year, the digital advertising spend will approach $60 billion, so brands are increasingly challenged to get their message out to the right people.

At a session at the Ad:tech conference in New York Thursday, several brands ran through case studies where live digital content is being used to reach consumers.

Twitter was in the house, too, to talk about its Periscope service, which brands are increasingly seeing as the go-to medium for their live content creations.

Periscope, by the way, now supports horizontal video, and can be viewed in the living room on Apple TV, said Twitter senior brand strategist Tom Chirico.

Blumhouse Films (makers of the Paranormal Activity movies) produced the first live horror movie on Periscope, called Fifteen, on Halloween.

General Electric used live Periscope footage shot from drones to show its vast fields of clean energy wind turbines from the air. The drones also toured GE testing facilities and manufacturing plants across the country.

GE created a whole campaign around the drone videos, and promoted it to media.

“Anytime you innovate on a new platform, you have to build the whole experience around it, and you have to make a big deal out of it,” said GE global director of innovation Sam Olstein. “You have to make a big deal of it internally.”

Wendy’s used YouTube stars Rhett and Link (Good Mythical Morning) in a live video session where the two interacted with fans. Behind it all was a branded campaign for a Wendy’s drink.

In all, Wendy’s six-hour session produced 57 customer videos, started 1,378 Twitter conversations, and reached 1.5 million unique visitors.

Wendy’s is working with the idea of spending its entire advertising budget on nontraditional media like live web video and Periscope, said digital marketing director Mike Bueno.

“We can’t talk about specific sales numbers, but we did see that this program did substantially move sales,” Bueno said.

“These platforms are the new studios,” said Will Keenan, Streamup‘s president and chief content officer, of the Periscopes and Snapchats of the world. “Wherever the eyeballs go, advertisers will follow.”

Adele’s Album Will Be Big

For Adele’s millions of fans, perhaps the biggest question about her next album is whether its songs will pack the same emotional wallop that helped make her last record a global smash.

But behind the scenes, music executives are anxiously awaiting another detail: Whether Adele will make her new songs available on streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music or withhold them for a time to propel album sales. With two weeks left before the scheduled release of the album, titled “25,” streaming services are still awaiting the final word.

Adele’s choice will reflect the music industry’s larger debate over how fully to embrace the streaming format. Elite artists like Adele, Taylor Swift and Beyoncé still sell millions of albums on CD or via downloads, and by streaming their new songs immediately, they risk sacrificing those lucrative sales.

Through their success, those three women have also accumulated a rare level of power in the industry, allowing them to take risks over how their music is released and consumed, and the rest of the business has taken notice.

A TV blitz is expected from NBC in coming weeks, including a concert special and an appearance on “Saturday Night Live.” Music executives widely predict that the album could sell well over a million copies in its first week.

“Everything on Top 40 radio now sounds alike, but this is a phenomenon,” said Lenny Beer, the editor of Hits, an industry news and gossip magazine.

Adele’s position on streaming, however, is unclear. When “21” came out, downloads were still an ascendant format and Spotify had not arrived in the United States. (Like other artists at the time, she withheld her album from Spotify for months, a move that has gradually gone out of fashion.)

Now, Spotify is just one of an array of streaming outlets that include Apple, Google, Rdio and Amazon.

Adele is said to be personally involved in deciding whether and how her music should be streamed — an unusual level of involvement for a major star in such a granular business issue.

Representatives for Adele, as well as for Spotify and Apple, declined to comment for this article.

Streaming’s ability to pay fair wages to artists remains deeply disputed. Last year, Ms. Swift removed her catalog from Spotify because the service, which has both free and paid versions, would not restrict her music to the paid level. “It’s my opinion that music should not be free,” Ms. Swift wrote in The Wall Street Journal a few months before the dispute.

Fellow artists cheered Ms. Swift on for taking a stand and for later challenging Apple over its plan to not pay royalties during trials of its new streaming outlet, Apple Music. (She persuaded Apple to change course, but her music is still not on Spotify.) In contrast, Adele has not used her popularity as a vehicle for activism on behalf of artists’ rights. And music executives say that for most acts, streaming remains an essential form of promotion.

“Spotify and others like it have become the new radio play,” said Jim Griffin, a digital media entrepreneur and former record executive. “In a very real way, not being on Spotify is like not being on the radio 10 years ago, and that’s a problem.”

Executives briefed on the plans for Adele’s release said that streaming services had been given no clear indications about whether, or when, the album would become available on those outlets. “Hello” was widely available for streaming, but that may have been a test. In one likely case, the executives said, the album could be withheld from streaming outlets for a week or more to maximize its CD and download sales.

For artists like Adele, CD sales remain a major source of income, and the stores that sell her music are an important promotional partner. Target will sell a deluxe version of the album with three extra songs, an arrangement similar to the one it had last year for Ms. Swift’s album “1989.”

A big-selling album is important for smaller brick-and-mortar shops too, like Newbury Comics, a chain in New England where Adele’s last album, “21,” was the biggest seller in 10 years or more, said Carl Mello, the store’s senior buyer. But one hit is just one hit, and album sales are down 5 percent for the year so far, according to Nielsen.

“I don’t think that one release,” Mr. Mello said, “would ever solve the problems of the music business.”

Even if Adele were to release “25” on streaming services immediately, some analysts believe that her appeal may simply be so broad that she can still count on enormous sales. Adele has amassed an audience that crosses virtually all demographic barriers, appealing to teenagers, their parents and maybe even their grandparents.

“Adele’s reach is so vast, and the anticipation for this release is so great, that she can have scale across multiple categories of consumers,” said Mark Mulligan, a digital media analyst with Midia Research. “She can have a very traditional audience that still wants to go out and buy stuff, as well as a digital-native audience who will not buy much but will stream intensively. Both are giant audiences on their own.”

Facebook adds song clips from Spotify and Apple Music to your News Feed

As part of its ongoing effort to surface every bit of information you could possibly need without ever having to leave your News Feed, Facebook has begun rolling out a new music feature that will let you sample the music shared into your feed. A new post format called Music Stories will let users preview 30 second clips of songs and albums shared to Facebook from Spotify, Apple Music, and iTunes.

Music Stories — which are only available in Facebook’s iOS app — pulls in streams shared to the social network from Spotify and Apple Music and repackages them in Facebook’s new audio player, allowing users to sample the songs and albums without having to leave the app — eventually you should be able to share playlists as well. You don’t need to have Spotify or Apple Music installed on your phone, or be a subscriber to either service to hear clips on Facebook. Users can save songs to their music collections, or buy it from iTunes by clicking a button on the post. Want to share music from another streaming service? Facebook says more services will support Music Stories in the near future.

This is Facebook’s first major move toward music since it launched a deep integration with Spotify in 2011. The partnership helped Spotify grow in the United States, but was a clunky addition to Facebook. If you had it activated, Spotify automatically posted everything you played to your News Feed, and if you clicked play on a song, it would kick you out of the browser and into Spotify’s desktop app. Spotify went so far as to force users to sign up with a Facebook account, which didn’t please anyone. But times are different now.

Instead of being a dumping ground for everything you listen to on Spotify, Facebook is now only going after the cream of the crop: the music you actively want to share with your friends and family. As Facebook has become the place where most people get their news, and with its rapidly growing video platform pulling in a staggering 8 billion views a day, getting back into music was the next logical step.

In July, The Verge reported that Facebook was holding talks with labels about their renewed interest in music. Nearly 900 million people use Facebook on mobile devices every day, and there’s little reason to think Facebook’s ambitions with music will stop at song previews. 

There’s no clear indication why Facebook couldn’t stream a full song from Spotify or Apple Music or any other streaming service right in the Facebook app, and that kind of integration could help spur serious growth for music services and increase Facebook’s usage time. If you already get your news and watch your videos inside Facebook, why not sign up for a participating service and stream your music all from one app? For now, you can’t stream a full song inside of Facebook, making Music Stories less useful to Spotify users than the embeds you find around the web." And let’s not forget about YouTube.

Unfortunately, the integration of these music services increases the risk you’ll see Macklemore in your feed. Macklemore (and Ryan Lewis) sent us the following statement: "One of our priorities has always been to deliver our music to our fans as directly as we can and we are excited that now there is an even easier and more direct way to do that on Facebook."

So anyway, consider yourself warned.

Music Stories will begin rolling out to iOS users around the world today.

Volkswagen shares plunge over understated carbon dioxide efficiency

FRANKFURT – Volkswagen shares are falling after the company said it had understated carbon dioxide emissions for 800,000 cars, widening its scandal over cheating on U.S. diesel emissions tests.

The company’s ordinary shares slid 9.7 per cent Wednesday to 100.80 euros in morning trading in Europe. The carmaker said Tuesday after the European market close that it found “unexplained 

inconsistencies” in carbon dioxide emissions in some vehicles. The company found the additional problem as it investigated revelations that up to 11 million of its vehicles had software that allowed them to deceive emissions testers.

The company has so far been unable halt the flow of negative surprises since the scandal first became known Sept. 18, when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced the Volkswagen had installed software on 482,000 cars that enabled the cars to meet emissions standards when it was placed on a test stand but then disabled emissions controls during normal driving.

The announcement follows U.S. allegations that the defective software was also found in some cars with larger engines, including Volkswagen’s elite Porsche brand.

CEO Matthias Mueller has promised the company will “relentlessly and completely clarify the matter.” He has said the company must re-examine its corporate culture to prevent such missteps from occurring again.

The news that Porsche vehicles also had the deceptive software was an embarrassment for Mueller, who headed Porsche before he became CEO.

Mueller has said that upper management would not have involved itself in the details of software development and has pointed to “a few” employees who altered the software code. The company has hired law firm Jones Day to investigate.

The latest on Saturday's crash of a Russian plane in Egypt that killed 224 people.

The latest on Saturday's crash of a Russian plane in Egypt that killed 224 people. All times local. 12:45 a.m.

A U.S. official briefed on the matter says U.S. intelligence agencies have assembled preliminary evidence that a bomb brought down the Russian airliner.

The official says intercepted communications played a role in the tentative conclusion that the Islamic State group's Sinai affiliate planted an explosive device on the plane.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, and others said there had been no formal judgment rendered by the CIA or other intelligence agencies, and that forensic evidence from the blast site, including the airplane's black box, were still being analyzed.

12:10 a.m.

The deputy head of Sharm el-Sheikh airport says Britain acted too hastily when it decided to suspend flights to the airport following the crash of a Russian plane in the region.

Hany Ramsay says Britain's conclusion that the plane may have been brought down by a bomb comes "too soon" and may be aimed at damaging the country's vital tourism sector. "Other countries might soon follow them. They want to hurt tourism and cause confusion," Ramsey told the AP Wednesday. He suggested that ulterior political and commercial motives may be behind the British statement.

The Russian jet had left Sharm el-Sheikh airport shortly before it crashed over the Sinai Peninsula early Saturday, killing all 224 people on board.

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11:30 p.m.

Ireland has followed the British lead and directed Irish airlines to suspend flights to Sharm el-Sheikh Airport following the crash of a Russian airliner that killed all 224 people on board. In a statement Wednesday, the Irish Aviation Authority urged airlines not to fly to or from Sharm el-Sheikh Airport or in the Sinai Peninsula "until further notice."

It said an update will be issued when more information becomes available.

The British government earlier Wednesday suspended flights to and from Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, saying it is increasingly concerned that the Russian plane was brought down by a bomb.

British aviation experts are travelling to Sharm el-Sheikh, where the flight that crashed Saturday originated from, to assess security. It wasn't immediately clear if the Irish government would also send down a security team to Egypt.

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11:15 p.m.

Egypt has confirmed that the voice recorder of the Russian plane that crashed in the Sinai Peninsula is damaged.

Egypt's Aviation Ministry says the cockpit voice recorder of the plane is "partially damaged" and that as a result "a lot of work is required in order to extract data from it."

Russian officials earlier Wednesday said the voice recorder had suffered serious damage.

Egyptian officials could not be reached for comment on the British government's suggestion that the aircraft may have been brought down by a bomb. Britain has suspended all flights to and from Sinai as a precaution.

Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, who arrived in London on a previously scheduled trip Wednesday, has said the security situation in the Sinai Peninsula is under "full control." He said earlier this week that the cause of the crash may not be known for months and that there should be no speculation until then.

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10:25 p.m.

Russia's Interstate Air Commission says the cockpit voice recorder from the Russian airliner that crashed in Egypt, killing 224 people, has suffered serious damage.

In a statement posted on its website Wednesday, the commission said that information from the flight's data recorder has been successfully copied and handed over to investigators, but that there was "serious mechanical damage" to the voice recorder.

The Interstate Aviation Committee is a Moscow-based organization that oversees civil aviation in much of the former Soviet Union.

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8:05 p.m.

The British government says it is increasingly concerned that a Russian jet was brought down by a bomb and is suspending flights to and from Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.

Prime Minister David Cameron's office says British aviation experts are travelling to the Sinai resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, where the flight that crashed Saturday originated from, to assess security before British flights there will be allowed to leave.

Cameron's office at Downing St. says "we have become concerned that the plane may well have been brought down by an explosive device."

The British government's crisis committee is due to meet later Wednesday. The crash in the Sinai killed all 224 people on the Metrojet Airbus plane.

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5:55 p.m.

Egypt's Islamic State group affiliate has allegedly reiterated its claim to have downed a Russian passenger plane over the Sinai Peninsula last week, killing all 224 people on board.

In an audio recording circulated among militant supporters online Wednesday, a speaker said the crash coincided with the anniversary of the group's pledge of allegiance to the IS group. The dates of the crash and the pledge roughly coincide according to the Islamic calendar.

Experts say the militants lack the sophisticated arms needed to shoot down a plane at cruising altitude. The speaker did not say how the militants brought down the jet.

The AP could not independently verify the recording but it resembled previous statements issued by the group. The U.S.-based SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors jihadi websites, picked up the recording and circulated a translation.

Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi said an earlier IS claim was "propaganda" aimed at damaging Egypt's image.

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4:35 p.m.

Authorities are making another attempt to evaluate information from the voice recorder of the Russian plane that crashed in Egypt, after damage to the device prevented an earlier try.

Germout Freitag, spokesman for the German Federal Bureau of Aircraft Accident Investigation, said the plane's flight data recorder had been analyzed Tuesday though results had not yet been reported.

He says the plane's cockpit voice recorder could not be immediately evaluated because of damage to it, but investigators were working on it again Wednesday.

Two Germans are helping with the investigation because the aircraft was manufactured in Germany, while French experts were involved because the plane was designed in France.

All 224 people on board the plane died when it crashed Saturday into Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.

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10:30 a.m.

A Russian official says families have identified the bodies of 33 victims killed in Saturday's plane crash over Egypt.

The Russian jet crashed over the Sinai Peninsula early Saturday, killing all 224 people on board. Most of them were holidaymakers from Russia's St. Petersburg.

Igor Albin, deputy governor of St. Petersburg, said in a televised conference call that as of Wednesday morning families have identified 33 bodies.

Emergency Situations Minister Vladimir Puchkov said rescue teams in Egypt have expanded the search area to 40 square kilometers (15 square miles).

Russian officials have refrained from announcing the cause of the crash, citing the ongoing investigation.

A cargo plane has crashed on take-off near the international airport in South Sudan's capital Juba.

Two people were pulled from the wreckage alive but one of them later died, leaving a young boy as the only survivor, the Red Cross said.

The Antonov An-12 plane was heading to Paloch, Upper Nile State, and crashed 800m (half a mile) from the runway.

In a statement, Ukraine-based Antonov said the plane had not been airworthy.

It said the plane, which was built in 1971, "was is no state to fly because it failed to undergo timely technical servicing... that should have included work on extending its resources and exploitation timeframe", AFP news agency reported.

South Sudan authorities warned that the death toll could rise as the debris was cleared.

The plane crashed into a farming community on an island on the White Nile River but so far all the victims recovered were from the aircraft, the Red Cross said