February is traditionally the month when the vast majority of marketers stand down and let the Super Bowl advertisers battle it out for dominance in YouTube views. But this year, someone forgot to tell PlayStation.
The Sony gaming brand outlasted three strong Super Bowl spots from Samsung, RAM Trucks and Jeep to take the top spot on Google and Adweek's YouTube Ads Leaderboard for the month of February—all thanks to the main teaser video for the PlayStation 4 console, which racked up an impressive 26 million views, 5 million more than the closest contender.
Remarkably, the six other spots on this month's Leaderboard come from three advertisers—with Pepsi, Chevrolet and Oreo each placing two spots on the list. Chevy's two entries are actually two different versions of the same spot—the 60- and 90-second iterations of its "Find New Roads" anthem commercial. But even taken as one, those view counts would not have placed Chevy in the top four.
One of the two Oreo spots was from the Super Bowl. And one of the two Pepsi spots was Super Bowl related—it's the fake behind-the-scenes look at Coke's Super Bowl ad.
The view counts are as of March 4. To be eligible for the YouTube Ads Leaderboard, videos must be marked as ads on YouTube (i.e., they get some paid views) but must also earn significant organic views. See all 10 spots at the link below.
