Unruly / News / Unruly Unveils The Top 20 Most Shared Ads Of 2013

Unruly Unveils The Top 20 Most Shared Ads Of 2013

Ads from Dove, GEICO, Evian, Pepsi and Kmart top the chart of most successful branded videos of the year

November 21, 2013 — A three-minute video from Dove that aims to show women they are more beautiful than they think is the most shared ad of 2013.

‘Dove Beauty Sketches’, created by agency Ogilvy Mather for the Unilever personal care brand, tops the 2013 Top 20 Global Social Video Ads Chart —an annual ranking of the year’s most socially-shared video ads of the year—released today by Unruly.

The ad, which was also distributed by Unruly, has attracted 4.24 million shares across Facebook, Twitter and the blogosphere since its launch in April, putting it just ahead of GEICO’s ‘Hump Day’ commercial (4.03 million) in second spot. It’s also the most viewed online video ad of all time, as reported by the Unruly Viral Video Chart, which has been tracking the most shared videos on the web since 2006.

Other ads to appear in the top 20 include Evian’s ‘Baby&Me’, the follow-up to its record-breaking 2009 hit ‘Roller Babies’Kmart’s ‘Ship My Pants’ commercial and a prank played on coffee shop drinkers to promote the remake of 70s horror classic Carrie

To see the full list, click here.

“Shares are the currency of social success and for leading brand marketers discovering how to create and distribute highly shareable content repeatedly and at scale is now at the top of their wish list,” said Richard Kosinski, US president, Unruly. “Marketers are challenging the value of a view and instead are focusing on creating content and distribution strategies which drive deeper levels of engagement, such as sharing, data capture, brand uplift or online purchases. Dove Real Beauty Sketches is a great example, as the ad that not only elicits strong emotions from consumers, but also gives its viewers a strong reason to share it within their social networks.”

In second spot is a commercial by insurance firm GEICO, which celebrates the middle of the working week – ‘Hump Day’. This ad has trended every Wednesday since its launch in May, which does not follow the normal ad sharing trends, in which a quarter of the total shares happen within the first three days of launch. About 67% of the 4.03 million shares it has attracted have occurred on a Wednesday.

“The top 20 list shows how brands, big and small, local and global, can make a big impact using social video across the web,” continued Kosinski. “With the right content and the right distribution strategy, advertisers have the ability to engage consumers at speed and scale.”

Over the last 12 months, one trend that has emerged is brands are now embracing the role of content creator. In 2013, brands did not have the large events to inspire content as they had in 2012, such as the Olympics, so they have created their own dramas, experimenting with a wide range of emotional triggers, including hilarity, shock and fear, all demonstrated in the top 20 ads.

To find out more about the social video trends of 2013, click here.

* Methodology:

Unruly’s rankings are based on the number of shares across Twitter, Facebook and the blogosphere as opposed to the number of views. As such, it is a measure of the ad’s virality, ranking ads by the volume of active pass-on rather than the passive metric of video consumption. The top 20 does not include movie or TV trailers.
Data was collected from January 1, 2013 to November 18, 2013. Data points were collected using  Unruly Analytics™ and the Unruly Viral Video Chart™.

UNRULY, UNRULY ANALYTICS, UNRULY VIRAL VIDEO CHART and logos and associated marks are trademarks of Unruly Group. Other marks are owned by their respective owners.

About Unruly

Marketing technology company Unruly is the leading global platform for social video marketing and works with top brands and their agencies to predict the emotional impact of their videos and get them watched, tracked and shared across paid, owned and earned media. We use our proprietary technology to turn target audiences into engaged viewers and engaged viewers into customers and advocates.

Our end-to-end solution cracks the code on social video sharing. Brands can predict shareability with Unruly Labs, engage their audience with Unruly Activate and prove social ROI with Unruly Analytics where we provide real-time competitive benchmarks across 2.7 million customizable data points.

The Unruly Viral Video Chart has tracked 365 billion video views since 2006. With an engaged audience of over a billion consumers, across the full range of mobile, tablet and second screen devices, Unruly has delivered, tracked and audited 3.5 billion video views across 3,000+ social video campaigns for over 400 brands including Volkswagen, Dove, Coca-Cola, T-Mobile, Microsoft, Warner Bros and adidas. We’ve worked with 60% of Interbrand’s Top 100 Best Global Brands and our mission is to deliver the most awesome social video advertising campaigns on the planet.

Founded in 2006, Unruly has 12 offices and employs over 130 people globally. In 2012, Unruly secured a $25 million Series A investment led by Amadeus, Van den Ende & Deitmers and Business Growth Fund – the largest ever for a private company in the social video space. The company has won over 15 awards including ‘Best Content Distribution Service’ at the Braves Awards; ‘Digital Innovator of the Year’ at the Sunday Times Hiscox Tech Track 100; ‘International Management Team of the Year’ at the BVCA Awards 2013 and #14 on the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 EMEA.

To find out more, visit www.unrulymedia.com.