‘Squid Game,’ Samsung and Apple Top YouTube’s 2022 Ad Global Leaderboard

Todd Spangler
·3 min read
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The original “Squid Game” trailer took the green light all the way to a spot on YouTube’s top 10 ads leaderboard for the last 12 months.

Coming in at No. 5 on the YouTube global ad ranking, Netflix’s “Squid Game” Season 1 trailer, released Sept. 1, 2021, has nearly 50 million views to date. Among the YouTube top 10, it registered the most likes with almost 850,000. Netflix has greenlit a second season of the violent South Korean drama and last week released a Season 2 teaser trailer.

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YouTube released the rankings Monday, timed for the kickoff of the 2022 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. The spots on the list, a weighted ranking of the 10 most popular ads worldwide viewed on YouTube, generated more than 565 million global views from June 2021-May 2022.

Samsung took the No. 1 spot on the list with the Galaxy Unpacked 2021 trailer, which questioned whether “good” is “good enough.” Meanwhile, Apple’s “Escape From the Office,” the longest video on YouTube’s top 10 at 8 minutes and 50 seconds, came in at No. 8, showing a team of underdogs using the tech giant’s tools to turn an idea into a product and a product into a company.

Star power continued to be a major draw, with top ads featuring Anne Hathaway and tennis pro Roger Federer (for the MySwitzerland tourism board), Scarlett Johansson and Colin Jost (Amazon), Morgan Freeman (Turkish Airlines), and Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara, Brie Larson, Danai Gurria and Dave Bautista (Nissan). The Johansson-Jost ad for Amazon’s Alexa, revolving around the voice assistant playing havoc with the couple’s domestic bliss, was also the No. 1 most-watched Super Bowl LVI spot this year on Super Bowl Sunday.

The YouTube “Cannes to Cannes Ads Leaderboard” is a list of the top 10 most popular video ads globally from June 2021-May 2022. The ad ranking is determined using YouTube data that signals strong viewer choice, including such factors as organic and paid views, watch time, and audience retention (i.e. how much of a video people watched).

“Creatively speaking, stories that are accessible — culturally, conceptually, emotionally — tend to lead to effective, compelling creative work. Great stories in the hands of great storytellers,” said Eugene Buono, head of creative, U.S. creative works at Google. “This year’s Ads Leaderboard collection proves that’s where it starts.”

Here’s the YouTube Ads Leaderboard for June 2021-May 2022:

1. Samsung (South Korea): Galaxy Unpacked August 2021: Official Trailer

2. MySwitzerland (Switzerland): No One Upstages the Grand Tour of Switzerland

3. Omega (Switzerland): Timekeeping and Tradition: OMEGA Meets Japan

4. Amazon (US): Amazon’s Big Game Commercial: Mind Reader

5. Netflix (US): Squid Game Official Trailer

6. Turkish Airlines (Turkey): Pangea | Official Film

7. Nissan USA (US): Nissan Presents: Thrill Driver

8. Apple (US): Escape From the Office

9. Imagine Your Korea (Korea): Feel the Rhythm of Korea

10. Chevrolet (US): The First-Ever All-Electric Chevy Silverado 

 

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