YouTube has released the September edition of its Ads Leaderboard, a monthly look at the branded YouTube videos that received the most views during the previous month. This time, well-established brands claimed most of the ads in the top ten, but the Apparently Kid‘s Freshpet spot added a viral video star to the rankings.
The brand with the biggest presence on the list is Samsung, which regularly appears in the YouTube Ad Leaderboard. The introductory video for the Galaxy Note 4 claimed the top spot with more than 22 million views in September, and a similar video introducing the Galaxy Gear S came in 5th place with 5.5 million views. Samsung, which released a series of popular World Cup ads over the summer, has now had 11 entries in the YouTube Ads Leaderboard so far this year.
Paid views are clearly a big part of Samsung’s presence. The #9 ad on the Leaderboard, which introduces a new GoPro camera, only has one-third of the views of Samsung’s top-ranked entry, but it has more than two times as many likes. The Apparently Kid made a splash, too. His ad for Freshpet, which arrived on YouTube one day after his hysterical appearance on Ellen, gained 3.2 million views and nearly 15,000 likes in September.
Here is the full list of YouTube’s most-viewed ads for September:
Samsung: Samsung GALAXY Note 4 – Official Introduction, 21,910,996 views
Budweiser: Global Be(er) Responsible Day | “Friends Are Waiting” | Budweiser, 18,273,309 views
KLM Airlines: KLM Lost & Found service, 9,653,681 views
Gatorade: Gatorade | Made in New York ft. Derek Jeter, 7,295,256 views
Samsung: Samsung Gear S – Official Introduction, 5,594,366 views
Apple: Apple – iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus – TV Ad – Duo, 5,212,223 views
Kmart: Kmart Not a Christmas Commercial, 4,531,582 views
Freshpet: Apparently Kid’s First Ever TV Commercial – Freshpet, 3,210,426 views
GoPro: GoPro HERO4: The Adventure of Life in 4K, 2,909,932 views
Under Armour: Gisele Bündchen – I WILL WHAT I WANT, 2,323,429 views
One important outlier on the list is KMart’s “Not A Christmas Commercial“, which is the first holiday ad to make the YouTube Ad Leaderboard in 2014. It’s getting to be that time of year again.
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