'Dear Sophie' Played on TV, but 'Savage Love' Won the Web for Google's Chrome

Google's "Dear Sophie" ad for its Chrome web browser got a lot of attention last week for becoming Google's second-ever TV ad, but it was the inspirational video with "Savage Love" columnist Dan Savage that won the most online views and landed the campaign at No. 3 on the Viral Chart last week.

The videos are part of Google's push for its window to the web -- now with 160 million users -- what Chrome SVP Sundar Pichai called at Google I/O "the most important platform of our era."

Add that to its past viral hits, its new ad for the Chromebook and savvy use of Twitter, and you'd have to say that while the search giant (which happens to own YouTube) is unorthodox, it has become one of the best consumer marketers in tech.

Also new on the chart: Wells Fargo, which is rebranding Wachovia bank branches in New York City, took a page out of the very thick T-Mobile video playbook and unleashed a cast of bucket drummers, high-kicking dancers, and break-dancers for a six-minute performance in Times Square. Peptol Bismol landed on the chart with a campaign including 20 different videos, a rare appearance for a drug maker. A tear-jerker from the David Cornfield Melanoma fund came in at No. 6 and a Virgin Media ad in the U.K. at No. 10

	Last Week	Brand	Campaign	Agency	Current Week Views*	% Change in Views**
1	1	T-Mobile	Royal Wedding	Saatchi & Saatchi	3,044,115	-64%
2	3	Evian	Live Young	BETC Euro RSCG	1,258,663	-2%
3	New	Google	It Gets Better	BBH	1,133,716	New
4	New	Wells Fargo	Flash Mob Times Square	N/A	968,822	New
5	New	Pepto-Bismol	Cinco de Mayo	Publicis New York	838,166	New
6	New	David Cornfield Melanoma Fund	Dear 16-year-old Me	Evidently Ltd.	836,033	New
7	2	Volkswagen	The Force	Deutsch	799,494	-52%
8	5	Downy	Mike in the Window	Digitas	754,989	+20%
9	6	Blendtec	Will It Blend?	In-house	621,736	+6%
10	New	Virgin Media	A More Exciting Place To Live	DDB	591,513	New
Source: Visible Measures 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.