YouTube on Thursday unveiled the top ads of the year in Nigeria and globally for 2018.
Juliet Ehimuan-Chiazor, Country Director, Google Nigeria unveiled this during a media chat with news men in Lagos.
She noted that the top ads of the year represent brands that have executed the most popular ads, as determined by YouTube’s strongest signals of viewer choice, including factors like watch time, views, and mix of paid/organic views.
According to her, YouTube has over a billion users, almost one-third of all people on the Internet and each day those users watch a billion hours of video, generating billions of views.
“YouTube users spend over an hour a day watching videos on mobile. It’s not surprising, then, that some of this audience is choosing to watch ads online.
“The top 10 ads on the Nigerian Leaderboard represent over 17 million views,” she stated.
She listed the top 10 2018 Nigeria Year-End YouTube Ads Leaderboard as follows: MTN – Traditional Wedding Day 2.6M views, Jumia Black Fridays 2018 2.3M views, Stanbic IBTC – Enabling you to be you 2.1M views, Union Bank of Nigeria – Enabling Success 2.7M views, United bank of Africa – 919 Dance Video 1.6M views
Others are MTN MPULSE – The Takeover 1.6M Views, Airtel NG – The-Inlaws – Tutorial 1.4M views, P&G Nigeria – Ariel Assurance 1.3M views, GTBank – Come Let’s Eat Together – GTBank Food & Drink 2018 1.2M views, LG INVERTER – The new Inverter equation of home appliances 1.2M views
She also listed the 2018 Global Year-End YouTube Ads Leaderboard as Alexa Loses Her Voice – Amazon Super Bowl LII Commercial, 50.1M views, YouTube Music: Open the world of music. It’s all here., 39.5M views, OPPO F7 – Real Support Makes Real Hero, 31.7M views, Nike – Dream Crazy, 27.3M views, Turkish Airlines: Safety Video with The LEGO Movie Characters, 25.2M views,
Others are Groupon 2018 Super Bowl Commercial | “Who Wouldn’t”, 25.5M views, Samsung Galaxy: Moving On, 17.4M views, HomePod — Welcome Home by Spike Jonze — Apple, 16.3M views, Gatorade | Heart of a Lio, 13.7M views, Rescue Blue the Dinosaur – LEGO Jurassic World – Pick Your Path, 10.8M.
Looking at this year’s top ads on YouTube, we found a few key trends, said Google Nigeria, country director, Juliet Ehimuan-Chiazor, announcing the Leaderboards.
• Keeping it in the family: Emotive storytelling is key to building brand love and preference; that’s an insight this year’s top performers quite literally brought home, with family and belonging emerging as key ad themes, as shown in Airtel NG – The-Inlaws.
• Culture Connects: More and more brands are infusing culture into their storytelling to boost resonance, as MTN did with its Traditional Wedding day ad.
• Music: Music has found a place at the heart of YouTube – so it’s no surprise to see many of our winners riffing on musical themes this year, like Uba did with 919 Dance video.
• Connecting to 2018: Amid a year of political and social turmoil, many brands chose to take a stance on social topics, leading to some of the year’s most thought-provoking work, including Union Bank’s Enabling success.
• Connecting to a trend: Infusing popular offline trends into YouTube ads helps brands build authenticity and connect to the heart like P&G Nigeria did in its Ariel Assurance ad.
“Congratulations to each of the brands on this list (and their creative / media agencies) for embracing the storytelling power of YouTube,” Ehimuan-Chiazor said.
“In 2018, as in every other year, clarity of purpose, generosity of spirit and finesse in execution mark out top performers.”