AllThingsD » Visible Measures

Your Favorite YouTube Ad of 2011? Apple, of Course.

Peter Kafka — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 15:00:39 +0000

Apple’s clever, effective ads have a well-deserved aura. But its brand is so powerful that even its relatively mundane marketing efforts draw an enormous amount of attention. Hence the most “viral tech ad” of 2011: Apple’s straightforward unveiling of the iPhone 4S.

That designation comes from Web video tracker Visible Measures, which says the official upload from Apple, plus unofficial uploads and derivative clips (parodies, “responses,” etc.), generated 28 million views this year.

Runners-up for the “most viral” title, according to Visible Measures: Ads featuring Lady Gaga, the International Space Station, PlayStation 3 and YouTube gaming god Freddie W. (One of these things …)

It’s worth noting that Visible Measures’ methodology and classifications for this one are a bit particular. For instance, it includes ads for videogame platforms, but not the games themselves. There’s some logic to that, because while videogames have many, many more views, the bulk of them come from “game play” videos that players upload themselves.

Which is fine, but that also means that straight-up ads like Jonah Hill’s Call of Duty spot don’t make the list. And that one has racked up a minimum of 17.7 million views this fall.

But at the very least we can say that these are five very, very popular Web videos from the past year.

Google Chrome’s “The Web is What You Make of It” Campaign: 22 million views

YouTube/Spacelab: 17 million views

Sony PS3 “Michael/Long Live Play” ad: 15.8 million views

YouTube star Freddie W’s Samsung “Gamer Commute” ad: 11.5 million views

"Oops": Rick Perry's Viral Classic Hits a Million Views Overnight

Peter Kafka — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 19:38:47 +0000

What will the viral video guys track once the Republican primaries are over? But yes, for the record: Rick Perry’s on-stage brain leak last night has quickly become one of the Web’s biggest hits.

Visible Measures says it has attracted more than 1 million views since last night. I can tell you with almost clinical precision that his debate gaffe occurred around 10:18 pm Eastern time, because it was all over Twitter as soon as it left — or didn’t leave — his mouth.

Still, it’s not Perry’s biggest Web video hit (yet). Visible Measures reminds us that his first big campaign ad racked up more than 2 million views earlier this fall.

Meanwhile, for ad/tech/biz types: Note that the moment occurred on CNN’s broadcast, but YouTube attributes the bulk of the views to Huffington Post co-founder Jonah Peretti’s BuzzFeed, which got the clip up with alacrity. [Ugh. As Ethan Mandel notes, this was actually CNBC's broadcast -- easy enough to spot had I been paying attention -- and now CNBC has removed this particular version. Still easy enough to find on YouTube, though.]

Of Course That Herman Cain Smoking Ad Is a Web Video Hit. But What About the Rick Perry Spot?

Peter Kafka — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 21:15:15 +0000

When your pals start posting a Republican primary candidate’s TV spot on Facebook, you know it’s gone viral.

At least if you’re me, and your pals never, ever post Republican primary candidates’ TV spots on Facebook.

So no surprise to learn that the weird/funny/puzzling Herman Cain “smoking” ad is the 2012 campaign’s most popular Web video to date. So says Visible Measures, which tracks this kind of stuff.

The ad has racked up 2.1 million views on YouTube and other sites. Tellingly, only 1.3 million views come from the original video — the rest are reposts, “replies”, spoofs, etc.

And if you haven’t seen it yet, of course, you really should.

More interesting to me is that this ad, from Cain rival Rick Perry, is the second-biggest hit on the Web. And it’s a photo finish. This one, which first appeared in September, has just under 2.1 million votes. If this were a real race, we’d have a recount.

So. Two ads, almost-equal view counts, very different zeitgeist rankings.

Lesson here? Simple: It’s easy, if you’re me, to define “viral” as “thing I’ve heard about.” And often, you/I will be correct.

But very often the chattering/typing classes — or anyone, for that matter — mistakenly assume that our view of the world looks like the one everyone else sees. And the great/terrifying/humbling thing about the Web is that every so often it reminds us that there are 7 billion people out there. Which means “popular” is often going to mean “never heard of it.”

Okay. Sermon’s over! Back to me and my pals on Facebook. Look at this old “Headbangers Ball” video my friend Todd just posted!

Sharethrough CEO on Why You Should Care About Social Video Ads (Video)

Liz Gannes — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 18:34:23 +0000

Sharethrough is a new kind of ad platform: One focused exclusively on video and social sharing. It doesn’t make viral videos, but it does help sites create custom ad units that fit with the flavor of their community of sites, like Reddit and BuzzFeed. The company charges on a cost-per-view basis. And yes, it guarantees it can get your funny ad a lot of views.

In advertising speak, San Francisco-based Sharethrough combines earned media and paid media. For example, it helped get this recent short film for Lego by Pereira & O’Dell, which was rather nifty on its own, 1.5 million views in two weeks on various platforms.

Sharethrough competes with companies such as Visible Measures, TubeMogul and Jun Group. And together, they’re competing with more conventional video ad units, like pre-rolls. The various firms are all trying to gain visibility in the emerging social video ad market by releasing stats and forecasts. Visible Measures said social video ad campaigns generated more than 2.7 billion views in 2010, up from 820 million in 2009. And here’s a recent demographic breakdown of Jun Group data.

Sharethrough, for its part, said it is now signing $75,000 campaigns on average, up from $20,000 a year ago. It has also doubled its number of customers to 100 in the last year.

If you count YouTube, according to Sharethrough CEO Dan Greenberg, the social video ad market is worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Everyone else probably counts for about $50 million combined, he said.

Here’s a video of Greenberg explaining Sharethrough and what it does. His company has raised a total of $6 million from investors including North Bridge Venture Partners and Floodgate.

[ See post to watch video ]

Web Surfers Love the Tiger Woods Ad. Especially When It's Not the Tiger Woods Ad.

Peter Kafka — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 16:34:31 +0000

No surprise that Nike’s (NKE) creeptastic Tiger Woods ad, featuring the disembodied voice of the golfer’s dead father, is a hit on the Web. Or at least, “well-viewed”; I’m not sure “hit” is the right term for the freak-show/marketing message.

More interesting is that the spinoffs, parodies, replies, etc., the ad has generated are now more popular than the original on Google’s (GOOG) YouTube and other sites.

So says Web video tracker Visible Measures, which estimates that more than half the seven million views the ad generated in the last week came from “derivative” sources.

The most popular “derivative,” according to Visible Measures: This one, which mashes up the also super-creepy “David After Dentist” audio with the original. This is where you shrug and say something like “takes all kinds.” Blech.

Another Obama Winner: YouTube, Of Course

Peter Kafka — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 17:49:18 +0000

At this point, it’s going to be difficult to find a media company that hasn’t gotten a bump from Tuesday’s election and the run-up before it: Local TV got ad dollars; national TV got ratings; the New York Times’ Wednesday edition became a collector’s item; it was a record day on Digg and Twitter; etc.

But, for the record, here’s another winner: YouTube. This has nothing to do with the fact that Google (GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt stumped for Obama, but with the fact that YouTube users are furiously uploading versions of Obama’s Tuesday evening victory speech.

Video tracking service Visible Measures says it has tracked more than 500 versions of the clip embedded below (primarily on YouTube), which had generated some 6.8 million views by this morning. At least two million of those are coming from Obama’s official channel.

But as Obama bumps go, this one is relatively small. As of this afternoon, the speech had yet to crack YouTube’s most popular videos of the month page, which is where we learned that a new video of a nearly-naked Britney Spears has been viewed more than nine million times.