Sports fans know that the Den­ver Bron­cos beat the Car­oli­na Pan­thers by a score of 24 to 10 to win Super Bowl 50. All morn­ing, mar­keters and con­sumers have been talk­ing about their favorite Super Bowl ads. But which ads were the biggest win­ners for brands? Well, dif­fer­ent met­rics pro­vide dif­fer­ent answers.

YouTube Views: Top 10 Super Bowl Ads & Teasers

YouTube announced the top trend­ing Big Game ads and teasers on YouTube (by views) through Wednes­day, Feb. 3. That right – these ads were declared win­ners four days before Super Bowl Sun­day! Can they do that? Well, about 110 mil­lion view­ers have tuned in to the tele­vi­sion broad­cast of the Big Game every year since 2011. But, accord­ing to YouTube data, Super Bowl 50 ads and teasers had been watched more than 140 mil­lion times as of Feb. 3, 2016, with more than half of all views com­ing from mobile devices. Accord­ing to YouTube data, peo­ple had already watched near­ly 200 years’ worth of Big Game ads and teasers on YouTube four days before the Big Game, includ­ing over a century’s worth of Super Bowl 50 ads watched on mobile alone. Close to 40 Big Game ads, and over 130 teasers and ads com­bined, had been post­ed to YouTube at least four days before Super Bowl Sun­day, rep­re­sent­ing near­ly all of the brands who aired spots dur­ing the Big Game. And for good rea­son. Brands that release their ad on YouTube before the game receive an aver­age of 2.2x more views than those that wait­ed until game day to post an ad, accord­ing to a Pix­a­bil­i­ty Indus­try Study of Super Bowl 2015 YouTube Ads. This year, the top pre-game ad was from Hyundai. It has sur­passed 15 mil­lion views in just three days to become the most watched ad or teas­er as of Feb. 3.

“We use YouTube to jump-start the con­ver­sa­tion around our com­mer­cials,” Dean Evans, Chief Mar­ket­ing Offi­cer, Hyundai Motor Amer­i­ca, told Natal­ie Marchant, YouTube Spon­sor­ships Pro­gram Man­ag­er. “Peo­ple need to see them, like them and want to talk about them. And that’s what YouTube allows us to do.” Here’s the top trend­ing Big Game ads and teasers on YouTube (by views) through Feb. 3:

1. Hyundai — The Chase – Hyundai Super Bowl Commercial | The 2017 Hyundai Elantra

2. Pokémon — #Pokemon20: Pokémon Super Bowl Commercial

3. Pepsi — Jerry Rice and Shannon Sharpe Party Fail Study | Walmart | Pepsi

4. AXE — AXE — Find Your Magic

5. TurboTax — TurboTax 2016 Commercial “George Smoot Simple Questions” (Official :30) TV Ad

6. TurboTax — TurboTax 2016 Commercial “Michio Kaku Absolute Zero” (Official :30) TV Ad

7. UnitedHealthcare — UnitedHealthcare | Delivery :30

8. Wix.com — Kung Fu Panda’s Po Discovers the Power of Wix | Wix.com #StartStunning 2016 Big Game Campaign

9. TurboTax — TurboTax 2016 Commercial “S. James Gates W‑2” (Official :30) TV Ad

10. MINI USA — MINI USA | #DefyLabels Big Game TV Spot

USA Today’s Ad Meter: Top 5 Super Bowl Commercials

On the oth­er hand, USA Today con­ducts a live poll dur­ing the tele­cast of the Big Game. And here are the 5 best Super Bowl 50 com­mer­cials, accord­ing to Ad Meter vot­ers:

1. Hyundai, “First Date” Score: 6.91

2. Heinz, “Wiener Stampede” Score: 6.64

3. Doritos, “Ultrasound” Score: 6.61

4. Doritos, “Doritos Dogs” Score: 6.49

5. Hyundai, “Ryanville” Score: 6.27

Unruly: Top 10 Most Shared Ads of Super Bowl 50

Final­ly, there’s video ad tech com­pa­ny Unruly’s Super Bowl 2016 Crown, which ranks Face­book as well as YouTube videos by the num­ber of shares they attract on Face­book and the blo­gos­phere as opposed to the num­ber of views. Accord­ing to Unruly, rank­ing brand­ed con­tent by the vol­ume of active pass-on rather than the more pas­sive met­ric of video con­sump­tion (views) is “a true mea­sure of a brand’s viral suc­cess.” Unruly’s stats are based on data from Unruly Ana­lyt­ics, which were com­piled on Feb. 8, 2016. Accord­ing to Unruly’s data, Dori­tos “Ultra­sound’ is the most shared ad of Super Bowl 2016. The ad, which fea­tures a preg­nant woman get­ting an ultra­sound while her hus­band munch­es on a bag of Dori­tos, attract­ed a total of 893,465 shares, putting it way ahead of the extend­ed ver­sion of T‑Mobile’s “Restrict­ed Bling”, in sec­ond spot (346,854 shares).

Dori­tos’ win brings Budweiser’s Super Bowl dom­i­nance to an end. The AB InBev company’s ads have fin­ished at the top of the pile for the last three Super Bowls, but the beer brand had to set­tle for third spot this year, with “Give A Damn”, fea­tur­ing Helen Mir­ren, attract­ing 301,317 shares. Despite a num­ber of brands releas­ing their ads ear­ly online, this year has seen a sig­nif­i­cant decrease in shar­ing activ­i­ty from the pre­vi­ous year. The top 10 ads have so far gen­er­at­ed 2,889,156 shares online alto­geth­er — a 36 per­cent decrease on what the top 10 man­aged at the same time last year (4,485,297) and only slight­ly high­er than in 2014 (2,460,075). “The Super Bowl offers brands an ide­al oppor­tu­ni­ty to engage con­sumers, but this year adver­tis­ers failed to cre­ate con­tent that fans and view­ers want to watch and share,” Sara Wood, Unruly’s co-founder and co-CEO said. “Last year was an emo­tion­al roller­coast­er; this year was Super Bowl lite.” In fourth spot is an ad cel­e­brat­ing the 20-year anniver­sary of Poke­mon, fol­lowed by the extend­ed ver­sion of Heinz’s cute “Wiener Stam­pede” in fifth. The 30-sec­ond ver­sion of the same ad also makes the top 10. While Dori­tos took the num­ber one posi­tion, T‑Mobile man­aged to get more ads in the top 10 than any oth­er brand. Both the extend­ed and 30-sec­ond ver­sions of “Restrict­ed Bling” star­ring rap­per Drake, fea­ture in the top 10, while “Drop The Balls” was in ninth – despite only being released online on Sun­day. Oth­er ads to appear in this year’s top 10 include Hyundai’s “First Date” (6th), star­ring US come­di­an Kevin Hart, and Moun­tain Dew’s “#Pup­py­Mon­key­Ba­by” (7th). Here is Unruly’s rank­ing of the most shared ads of Super Bowl 50:

The 30-sec­ond ver­sion of the same ad also makes the top 10. While Dori­tos took the num­ber one posi­tion, T‑Mobile man­aged to get more ads in the top 10 than any oth­er brand. Both the extend­ed and 30-sec­ond ver­sions of “Restrict­ed Bling” star­ring rap­per Drake, fea­ture in the top 10, while “Drop The Balls” was in ninth – despite only being released online on Sun­day. Oth­er ads to appear in this year’s top 10 include Hyundai’s “First Date” (6th), star­ring US come­di­an Kevin Hart, and Moun­tain Dew’s “#Pup­py­Mon­key­Ba­by” (7th). Here is Unruly’s rank­ing of the most shared ads of Super Bowl 50:

1. Dori­tos — Ultra­sound Agency: Peter Carstairs Total shares: 893,465

2. T‑Mobile — Restrict­ed Bling (Extend­ed Ver­sion) Agency: Pub­li­cis Seat­tle Total Shares: 346,854

3. Bud­weis­er #GiveADamn Agency: Anom­aly Total shares: 301,317

4. Poke­mon — #Pokemon20: Poké­mon Super Bowl Com­mer­cial Agency: Omelet Total shares: 297,706

5. Heinz — Wiener Stam­pede (Extend­ed Ver­sion) Agency: DAVID Mia­mi Total shares: 295,805

6. Hyundai — First Date Agency: Inno­cean World­wide Total shares: 245,656

7. Moun­tain Dew — #Pup­py­Mon­key­Ba­by Agency: BBDO Total shares: 158,481

8. T‑Mobile — Restrict­ed Bling (30 Sec) Agency: Pub­li­cis Seat­tle Total shares — 124,551

9. T‑Mobile — Drop the Balls Agency: Pub­li­cis Seat­tle Total shares — 113,668

10. Heinz — Wiener Stam­pede 30 sec Agency: DAVID Mia­mi Total shares 111,643

Which Metrics Should Professional Marketers Use?

So, which met­rics should pro­fes­sion­al mar­keters use? Actu­al­ly, the right answer is: All of the above. Mea­sure­ment is essen­tial, both for defin­ing suc­cess and opti­miz­ing toward it. So, it is impor­tant to iden­ti­fy the right Key Per­for­mance Indi­ca­tors (KPIs) to mea­sure the suc­cess of your brand’s viral video mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy. Most pro­fes­sion­al mar­keters find it use­ful to select one met­ric for each of the fol­low­ing three buck­ets that mea­sure engage­ment with their con­tent:

• Audi­ence: Are you reach­ing the right audi­ence? How well?
• Expres­sion: Is your tar­get audi­ence engag­ing with your con­tent? How much?
• Par­tic­i­pa­tion: Is your audi­ence endors­ing and shar­ing your con­tent? How much?

The num­ber of views is a key met­ric for the first buck­et. The Ad Meter is a key met­ric for the sec­ond buck­et. And the num­ber of shares is a key met­ric for the third buck­et. Hope­ful­ly, this gives you a 360-degree, 3D view of what suc­cess­ful video mar­ket­ing looks like today. But by next year’s Super Bowl, who knows what it will look like. For exam­ple, mil­lions of view­ers may be able to “watch” the next year’s Big Game using Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty (VR) devices. In his keynote speech at CES 2016, Robert Kyn­cl, the Chief Busi­ness Offi­cer at YouTube, said, “For VR to be tru­ly suc­cess­ful, you need four things to hap­pen. You need the cam­era tech­nol­o­gy to cap­ture video in 3D and 360, you need a sto­ry­teller who can cre­ate con­tent using that tech­nol­o­gy, you need a device for users to view it and you need a plat­form on which that con­tent can live.” All four of these things are expect­ed to hap­pen in 2016. So, you can expect the world of video mar­ket­ing to change dra­mat­i­cal­ly before Super Bowl 2017.