September’s YouTube Ad Leaderboard Showcases Evolving Companies

Each month, the YouTube Ad Leaderboard reveals the ten branded videos released that month that have received the most views. The September 2015 Leaderboard was most an uneventful one, filled with the usual array of innovative tech demos, celebrity-driven commercials, and tentpole tie-ins. There was, however, at least one interest coincidence within the top ten: Both Honda and Google cracked the list with ads that refer to their respective histories.

Google’s contribution to the Ad Leaderboard finished second by rolling up more than nine million views in September. It shows off the ways Google’s design has evolved throughout the years and touts the various innovations that have come out of Mountain View. It ends with a call to the future, with a Google exec saying “this is just the tip of the iceberg.”

Honda’s Ad Leaderboard entrant

is eerily similar to Google’s, at least in terms of its content. It’s a collaboration with animator PES that runs through the 66 years of the automotive brand’s history. While its stop-motion style is wildly different from the look of Google’s ad, it also ends by looking forward to the future:  “You never know where a dream will lead you,” reads its final line.

Will this “evolution” format become a staple of branded video advertising? These two videos certainly turned in strong results, but neither of them were the coolest video from the September Ad Leaderboard. That distinction goes to a brilliant “prankvertisement” engineered by New Zealand’s Energy Online:

Here, courtesy of Google, is the full list:

 

1. FIFA 16 – Play Beautiful – Official TV Commercial, 10M views

2. Google, evolved, 9M views

3. H&M Close the Loop – Sustainable fashion through recycled clothes, 8.2M views

4. Samsung Mobile: It’s Not a Phone, It’s a Galaxy: Wireless Charging, 7.5M views

5. iPhone 6s – The Only Thing That’s Changed Is…, 5.5M views

6. Honda “Paper”, 4.3M views

7. Energy Online NZ: Door knocking is so last century. See how we got rid of them., 3.9M views

8. BB-8 App-Enabled Droid || Built by Sphero, 2.7M views

9. Quiznos: Burn Trials- Out of the Maze and onto the Playa, 2.6M views

10. iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus – Reveal, 2M views