With Cannes Lions 2019 on the horizon, YouTube has released its Cannes YouTube Ads Leaderboard celebrating the most popular global video ads since last year’s festival.
The Cannes Leaderboard shows a distinct trend towards long-form content, with winning ads averaging one minute and 46 seconds in length. Viewers are choosing to watch beyond the first five seconds of the ads, meaning brands need to consider how the story unfolds to hold attention. Amazon’s ‘Not Everything Makes the Cut’ is an example.
YouTube Culture & Trends Lead for EMEA Roya Zeitoune says: “The Ads Leaderboard winners tap into the things that make for successful ads. Some evoke an emotional response (LG, Nike), others use humour (Amazon, Orange, Apple, Turkish Airlines, Bosch), or celebrities (Shopee, Nike, Samsung, Coca-Cola, Amazon), or a combination of those three elements. These brands tapped into some of the most effective ingredients for ads.”
The ads represent 388M minutes of watch time and 276M views for the whole leaderboard.
Global reach: The top three spots belongs to ads from Brazil, the US and Egypt, with Vietnam and India following, showing that successful ads are gaining views from all across the globe.
Celebrity celebration: This year’s list has some star power with Harrison Ford in Amazon’s Alexa hit, Lego playing it up for Turkish Airlines and K Pop band Blackpink for Shopee app.
Emotion and humour: Nike tugs at the heartstrings with emotion while Bosch and Orange try humour.
Techie tech: Apple and Samsung put their products front and center while playing to their audiences needs.
Cannes 2019 YouTube Ads Leaderboard list and global views until June 2019:
1. Coca Cola: Vai no Gás, Brazil.
Media Agency: JWT & Kolab/McCann
Creative Agency: JWT
2. Amazon: Not everything makes the cut
Media Agency: Rufus
Creative agency: Lucky Generals and Amazon Internal Creative Team
3. Orange: Orange Go
Media Agency: N/A
Creative agency: N/A
4. LG Vietnam
Media Agency: VietBuzzAd (VBA)
Creative agency: VietBuzzAd (VBA) and HSAd Vietnam
5. Apple: iPhone XS — Growth Spurt
Media Agency: OMD
Creative agency: TBWA\MAL
6. Shopee: Shopee Birthday Sale Blackpink
Media Agency: In-house
Creative agency: In-house
7. Turkish Airlines: LEGO presents the safety video
Media Agency: People Initiative
Creative agency: Warner Bros
8. Nike: Dream Crazy
Media Agency: SapientRazorfish
Creative agency: Wieden & Kennedy
9. Bosch: #LikeABosch
Media Agency: OMD
Creative agency: Jung von Matt/Alster
10. Galaxy Note9: Fortnite Supply Drop
Brand: Samsung
Media Agency: Starcom
Creative agency N/A
Note: The YouTube Cannes to Cannes Ads Leaderboard is a list of the top 10 most popular video ads globally from Cannes 2018 until June 1st 2019. The ranking is determined using some of YouTube’s strongest signals of viewer choice – including factors like watch time, views, and mix of paid/organic views.
Editor’s note: Can’t see too many big Cannes winners among this lot but who knows?
