Visible Measures Blog

On this week's WSJ Presidential Ad Chart, the economy takes center stage. Obama tops the chart with the ad campaign Go. Launched a week ago, the campaign highlights that the economic collapse happened before he took office. To make the point stronger, the campaign has "2008" written on the screen as it runs through news stories about the economic turbulence. It has garnered 707,000+ views this week. 

Dark Shadows releases nationwide this weekend, creeping up the chart to fifth place. The latest Tim Burton creation stars Johnny Depp as Barnabas Collins, a vampire charged with protecting his long-lost, dysfunctional family. Michelle Pfeiffer, Helena Bonham Carter, and Jonny Lee Miller co-star. During its first week of release, the comedy gathered 2.6 million views for its week of release, a growth of over 100% over last week. The film has more than 400 assets, the majority of them copies and derivatives of the first trailer. 

On this week's Ad Age Viral Video Chart, Ford debuts Go Further at the top of the chart, attracting 2.9 million views. The 60-second spot features the 2013 Fusion Energi, the 2013 Escape, the theme line "Go Further," and an "EcoBoost" badge. It is the first time in Ford's advertising history that none of the featured vehicles are branded, and where Ford is never mentioned. Instead, viewers are teased with close-ups and sweeping shots of the non-branded vehicles.

At the top of the WSJ Presidential Ads Chart this week is an attack ad called Wasteful Spending by super PAC Americans for Prosperity. The ad accuses Obama of not creating American jobs with the stimulus. Instead, the ad says that Obama spent billions on green energy that created jobs in foreign countries. The ad has been widely criticized by fact checkers at the Washington Post.

The latest family-oriented viral has taken the Web by storm, complete with cute kids, sing-alongs, head banging, and air drum solos. Bohemian Rhapsody On The Way To School features Dad driving his three kids to school whilst the entire car rocks out to the classic Queen song, Bohemian Rhapsody.

The Avengers hits theaters nationwide this weekend, topping the Top 10 Online Film Trailers chart with nearly 12 million views. The Marvel film stars a host of A-listers as the Marvel superheroes, including Scarlett Johansson, Robert Downey, Jr., Mark Ruffalo, and Chris Hemsworth. The film has a variety of promotional assets, including more than 10 trailers, 20+ different TV spots, and 10+ featurettes.  With more than 1,800 placements across the Web, the action flick has generated significant viewership, a strong indicator of audience anticipation.

Stop me if you've heard this one. What happens when a baby dressed in a zebra costume gets placed in front of a hungry lioness at the zoo and the parents videotape the event? Yup, that's right, that video goes viral and those parents get famous. Fast.

This week on the Ad Age Viral Video Chart, we see four new social video campaigns enter the chart from a large spectrum of industries, from auto, electronics, food, to CPG.

American Crossroads' new Cool campaign takes the number two spot on the WSJ Presidential Chart this week with close to 360,000 views. Cool is in response to President Obama's appearance on Jimmy Fallon last week, "slow jamming" the news, which has generated over 2.9 million views on its own. The Fallon bit focused on how the president wants to help college students better afford college. Cool shows a number of clips of Obama "being cool," including the Fallon bit, calling Kanye a jack ass, dancing on Ellen, singing on stage, swatting a fly during an interview with John Harwood, drinking a beer, etc., before transitioning to stats on how difficult it is for college students to find jobs, how they're moving back home with their parents, and how student loans have topped $1 trillion.

People chose to watch ads over 1.3 billion times in Q1 2012, an increase of more than 40% since Q1 2012, and more than 225% since two years ago in Q1 2010. Typically, Q1 generates big numbers because of the Super Bowl, but this year's significant increase in views demonstrates the speed at which the social video industry is growing.