The World Cup is much more popular than the Super Bowl — at least when it comes to fans viewing TV commercials pegged to both events.
Ads around this year’s World Cup have already been viewed nearly twice as much on YouTube than ads pegged to the Super Bowl, according to stats from Google’s YouTube released Thursday.
And not only that — fans are sticking around to watch four times as many minutes of the World Cup ads than Super Bowl ads.
The popularity of World Cup-focused TV spots could be a wake-up call to Madison Avenue as advertising execs has gone all out in recent years to produce unique and eye-catching TV spots for the Super Bowl because of the huge audience the championship football game attracts.
But that may change after World Cup ads have accumulated more than 590 million total views in the first week of the month long event — compared to 305 million views of Super Bowl ads this year, according to YouTube.
People have watched more than 1.2 billion minutes of World Cup ads on YouTube since the worldwide games kicked off last week. That’s four times more time spent than on Super Bowl ads this year.
To be sure, the World Cup ads are also longer, and watched by more countries. The average length of the top 10 World Cup ads is around 3 minutes, versus 1 minute for the average Super Bowl ad, Google said.
The No. 1 World Cup ad, for Dannon’s Activia yogurt, is 3 minutes and 30 seconds. It’s basically a music video by Shakira for her song “La La La,” featuring soccer stars like Brazil’s Neymar da Silva.
Neymar, who is expected to reach David Beckham-level ad fame if Brazil wins the World Cup, features in many of YouTube’s top 10 ads, including the No. 2 most-watched — from Nike — and the No. 10 most-watched, by Beats Entertainment.
Here’s the top-10:
1. Shakira and Activia
2. Nike Football (Winner Stays)
3. Samsung Mobile
4. Nike Football (Last Game)
5. Adidas Football (The Dream)
6. Itaú
7. Adidas Football (House Match)
8. Castrol
9. Nike Football (Risk Everything)
10. Beats by Dre