What Are the Most Shared Ads of 2014?

Ads created around this year’s World Cup dominate a list of the top 20 most shared online ads of the year, which was released today by Unruly.

A fifth of the entries on this year’s Top 20 Global Social Video Ads Chart were either World Cup-themed or created by sponsors of the famous soccer spectacle, with Activia’s collaboration with Colombian pop princess Shakira for the video “La La La” claiming the number one spot.

The ad has attracted 5,819,822 shares across Facebook, Twitter, and the blogosphere since its launch in May, not only making it 2014’s landslide winner, but also the most shared ad of all time. VW’s 2011 Super Bowl ad, “The Force” (5,278,399 shares) had previously held the record for more than three years.

For 2014, 20th Century Fox’s “Devil Baby Attack” (2,153,236 shares) ended in second place.

Nike’s soccer ads “The Last Game” (third) and “Winner Stays” (eighth) also make it into the top 10, despite coming from a non-sponsor of the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil, while sponsor Castrol’s “Puppy Love” (fourth) – and one commercial from this year’s Winter Olympics – P&G’s “Pick Them Back Up” (19th) – feature in the top 20.

Others to make the cut include Cardstore’s “World’s Toughest Job,” Volkswagen’s “Eyes on the Road,” Thai Life Insurance’s “Unsung Hero” and John Lewis’s Christmas Ad “#MontyThePenguin.”

Richard Kosinski, Unruly’s president in the U.S., says, “This year we saw a hat-trick of global sporting events. Advertisers responded by investing in powerful ads that conveyed the excitement, triumph, and exhilaration of these global water-cooler moments.”

With 300 hours of content uploaded to YouTube every minute, three times more than one year earlier, and more than 1 billion video views on Facebook every day, consumers are inundated with content in their social feeds, so when a brand can create such a highly shareable video, you know they’ve hit something special, Kosinski notes. To reach success, he adds, brands took several different approaches, ranging from music videos and prankverts through to epic love stories and playful sing-alongs.

“Activia’s collaboration with Shakira for the video ‘La La La,’ for example, rose to the top by capitalizing on World Cup fever and the current trend for ‘trackvertising,’ where a brand and musical artist co-release a video which is both a musical track and an ad,” Kosinski explains.

He adds, “Another milestone hit in 2014 with the speed of sharing nearly doubling year-over-year. We saw 42 percent of shares occur in the first three days following campaign launch – up from 25 percent in 2013. With such a change in pace, it’s more vital than ever that brands support their social videos with paid media in this critical launch phase or they risk losing out on potential online buzz.”