It's so meta. Of course YouTube's 2015 video retrospective that pays tribute to all (or almost all) the viral phenomena of this year (with a nod to the whole decade) would go viral by itself, grabbing this week's first place in Visible Measure's Viral Chart. "YouTube Rewind 2015" is so packed with pop culture references that it's almost impossible to pick them all out in one pass. Maybe that's why it got 49.6 million views in the week through Sunday. See how the spot was made here.
Coming in second is Facebook's own video retrospective, more focused on the events that shaped 2015, like the Nepal earthquake, the terrorist attacks on Paris, the Black Lives Matter movement, but also giving a nod to The Dress, Back to The Future day and the new "Star Wars." The video got 27.3 million views.
Other highlights of the chart include Walmart, which grabbed two spots on the chart: one for the #Fillthetruck fundraiser for families in need this holiday season, and another for the fourth comeback of Craig Robinson's hilarious campaign singing in a Walmart store.
Ad Age's Viral Video Chart, powered by Visible Measures, focuses on brand-driven social video ad campaigns. Each campaign is measured by True Reach, an MRC accredited metric that includes views from brand-driven and audience-driven social video clips. The data are compiled using the patented Visible Measures platform, a constantly growing repository of analytic data on hundreds of millions of videos tracked across hundreds of online video destinations.
Note: This analysis does not include Visible Measures' paid-placement (e.g., overlays; pre-, mid-, and 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. View counts are incremental by week.
**Indicates percent change in views compared with the same period the week before.
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