Apple's iPad Ad? Yep, It Went Viral

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Lesson learned: never bet against Apple. Last week, I predicted that Apple's "Meet iPad" campaign, which debuted on TV during the Oscars, wouldn't go viral. Why? Because Apple videos typically don't due to the lock the company keeps on distribution. Sure enough, early on, "Meet iPad" got a slow start. But guess what? I was wrong! "Meet iPad" had a pretty strong week with 2.4 million views, good enough for No. 2 on the viral chart. Why? Well, intense interest in the product, obviously, but also a shift in Apple's strategy, which we also noticed last week. Apple has had a YouTube channel since 2005, but only recently started using it. In the past, they'd focused on driving views on Apple.com, but for the iPad, they allowed the video to be embedded across the web, and views were distributed across 100 different placements, according to Visible Measures. Apple turned off commenting on its own videos, but a robust conversation bloomed around copies. Interestingly, this posting, with 2,422 comments as of this writing, was most-viewed; Apple's official version was a distant second. Still, given the ambient Apple love on the web, shouldn't "Meet iPad" be No. 1? Check back next week. But enough about Apple. The most-viewed spot this week is a video that's been hanging around the list since the Super Bowl, but got some extra juice from controversy. E-Trade was slapped with a $100 million lawsuit for "Milkoholic" by Lindsay Lohan, and the surge to more than 3 million views, including 80,000 referrals from Perez Hilton. The only new entrant on the list -- aside from Apple -- is a video for BMW's R1000 motorcycle, "Welcome to Planet Power." Yep, it's a cool (and no doubt fake) stunt, and apparently these still work on the web. ship *The Visible Measures Top 10 Viral Video Ad Campaigns Chart focuses on brand-driven viral video ads that appear on online-video-sharing destinations. Each campaign is measured on a True Reach basis, which includes viewership of both brand-syndicated video clips and viewer-driven social video placements. The data are compiled using the Visible Measures Viral Reach Database, a constantly growing repository of analytic data on more than 100 million internet videos across more than 150 video-sharing destinations. Note: This analysis does not include Visible Measures' paid-placement (i.e., overlays, pre-/mid-/post-roll) performance data or video views on private sites. This chart does not include movie trailers, video-game campaigns, TV show or media network promotions, or public service announcements. View-count results are incremental by week. **Indicates percent change in views compared with the same period the week before. To notify Visible Measures of an upcoming video ad campaign, or for an end-to-end assessment of your campaign's overall performance, please contact Visible Measures directly.

Apple's iPad Ad? Yep, It Went Viral

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