Five of this week's videos on the Adweek/VidIQ top branded video chart (which tracked video views between Jan. 25 and Feb. 1) are Super Bowl advertisers, showing the advantages of releasing an ad before the game.
Budweiser, T-Mobile, BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Nationwide all placed on this week's chart, with Bud's "Lost Dog" grabbing the No. 1 spot. The brewer's ad went up on YouTube on Jan. 28—four days before the Super Bowl—and racked up 17.8 million views before it aired Sunday night. "Lost Dog" was also shared 104,000 times on Facebook and tweeted 241 times.
VidIQ's data claims that Nationwide was the only brand last week to run ads against its video (which, to be fair, is for a teaser and not one of the brand's two actual Super Bowl spots). According to VidIQ, YouTube does not disclose which of its videos also include ads, so the numbers are a bit of an educated guess. We've reached out to YouTube to check if Budweiser, T-Mobile, BMW and Mercedes-Benz ran ads last week and will update this story if we hear back.
Now that the Super Bowl is over, Budweiser's video has been viewed about 25 million times, meaning 71 percent of its views came before the game. T-Mobile's commercial with Kim Kardashian has generated more than 15 million views, while BMW claims just more than 14 million. Nationwide's teaser has been watched 7 million times and its full-length commercial has 1.2 million views. (The far more controversial Nationwide Super Bowl ad, "Make Safe Happen," is closing in on 6 million views.)
While not an official Super Bowl ad, Skittles' fake press conference with Marshawn Lynch grabbed the No. 6 spot on the chart. As of Jan. 31, the video had been watched 4.32 million times and shared 22,500 times on Facebook.
Check out the full list of the top videos in the VidIQ-powered interactive video player below.
NOTE: Adweek's VideoWatch Chart, powered by VidIQ, reveals the Top 10 Branded Web Videos on YouTube every week. The chart tracks more than just pure views, as VidIQ incorporates sharing data from Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, among other data sources, in an effort to measure true engagement. Every video is also ranked with VidIQ's proprietary Score, which helps judge the likelihood of a video being promoted in YouTube Related Videos, Search and Recommended Videos.