Sign in with Google
Ahead of the 2025 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, data scientists at Google conducted an AI-powered analysis of YouTube campaigns to uncover the characteristics of top-performing ads. We’ve shared our key learnings here. For more creative inspiration, explore YouTube’s best in ads site.
As creative leaders convene at Cannes Lions, discussions often center on the platforms and partnerships that influence the future of marketing. This year, as YouTube celebrates its 20th anniversary, we’re reflecting on its ongoing role in shaping the evolution of marketing.
Over the past two decades, YouTube has proven to be the ultimate canvas for business growth for advertisers of all sizes, allowing them to push the bounds of creativity through multiformat storytelling, harness the influence of trusted creators, and move at the speed of culture.
To take a closer look at how leading brands have successfully leveraged this canvas in the past year, our data scientists enlisted Google AI to analyze 4,700 ads1 from diverse campaigns around the world, and extract insights on style, sentiment, visuals, cultural references, creator presence, and more. From there, an algorithm grouped videos by their shared characteristics.
This process enabled us to distill several recurring themes. To apply what we learned to your own video strategy, here are three key ways brands broke through on YouTube this past year.
1. Leverage multiformat storytelling
YouTube’s dynamic creative options empower brands to create powerful narratives that forge deeper connections with audiences. However you want to tell your story — through brand or creator content, short- or long-form video, podcasts, or live streams — YouTube makes it possible.
Volvo, for example, successfully launched its all-electric EX90, using human-focused storytelling in various narrative lengths. The car brand started with a four-minute film that made the EX90 a pivotal character, then retold the story from the car’s perspective in a 60-second video. A 15-second spot provided surround sound and connected the two longer spots. To execute the approach, Volvo used AI-powered YouTube campaigns, driving a 250% increase in search lift, a 95% boost in brand consideration, and $80 million in earned media value.2
Other brands also harnessed YouTube’s versatility to tell stories that couldn’t be told anywhere else. Apple leaned into long-form with a five-minute spot (41 million views). Activision’s “Call of Duty” offered viewers a few long-form spots with its Unforgettable Verdansk Teaser (26 million views) and Verdansk Launch Trailer (39 million views). Starbucks opted for a trio of lengths: the 60-second Hello Again (3 million views), the 30-second Not My Name (4 million views), and the 15-second Iced Lavender Matcha (71 million views).
“Hello Again” from Starbucks Coffee offers viewers a glimpse of a day in the life of its baristas.
2. Harness the influence of trusted creators
Creators are the new Hollywood — challenging the status quo, pushing boundaries, and rewriting the rules of audience engagement. When brands empower creators to bring their own vision into a campaign, we see more innovation, and more resonant, entertaining ads. And because creators foster deep, trusting relationships with their audiences, creator collaborations can help garner more attention.
TurboTax collaborated with Adam Waheed to showcase his personal comedic style and illustrate how the product saves taxpayers’ time. The ad generated 18 million views in the process. In collaboration with Sonos, Marques Brownlee garnered over 3 million views with his review of headphones, which also elegantly integrates an ad for the Eight Sleep mattress, offering advice to an engaged audience that trusts him as an expert.
Creators are also disrupting traditional media formats to fuse brand messaging with their unique perspectives. Michelle Khare’s 87-minute video, I Trained Like a Black Belt for 90 Days interweaves her martial arts experience with Dove’s mission to support women in sports, delivering an ad that feels organic and playful. Meanwhile, AaronsAnimals partnered with Disney’s “The Lion King,” to create a video in his signature style that features his cat Prince Michael, drawing 27 million views and 830,000 likes.
Brand-creator collaborations are particularly effective because they don’t speak at an audience — they invite them into a story. This is redefining brand communication. McDonald’s, with its mellow, nostalgic breakfast ads for Sausage and Egg McMuffin and Hash Brown creates an emotional connection around the food itself. Panasonic Japan embraced the sensory trend of ASMR, crafting ads for its steamer that make viewers feel the heat, steam, and crispness of their freshly steamed clothing.
3. Seize the (cultural) moment
The world’s biggest moments have evolved far beyond a single event to encompass an ecosystem of “surround sound” — online reactions, live-stream chats, behind-the-scenes content, fan remixes, and much more. As an epicenter of culture, YouTube is where viewers turn during these moments to be fully immersed, and the brands tapping into these moments are driving impact.
Calm’s timely ad, Calm Silent, which ran during the 2024 U.S. presidential election cycle, directly addressed the needs of its community, meeting viewers in their emotional reality. Similarly, Vodafone Egypt’s Ramadan content and Coke Studio Bharat in India showed how brands can use YouTube to authentically show up for their audiences in regionally and culturally specific ways.
For Coke Studio Bharat, singer and composer Vishal Mishra, folk music icon Malini Awasthi, and singer Prateeksha Srivastava perform Mishra’s original song, “Holi Aayi Re.”
On the flip side, some advertisers took exclusive local events and offered a front-row seat to the unfolding narrative, broadening access to as many people as possible. Take, for example, the Met Gala. While only a select few attend, millions worldwide experience it through YouTube, from detailed fashion analyses to glimpses of life behind the scenes. This allows brands like Prada and Louis Vuitton to extend their luxury narratives beyond the red carpet.
Brands also tapped into creators to meet cultural moments in authentic, entertaining ways that only creators can. Haley Khalil’s 6-minute video for NFL Sunday Ticket playfully subverts typical product placement by using it humorously throughout her piece, demonstrating a self-aware approach that appeals to a media-savvy audience. And, in a powerful collaboration, Toyota tapped Zach King to create, star in, and direct his own Indiana Jones-inspired short film, allowing him to integrate his Asian-American heritage for a truly authentic connection.
YouTube creator Zach King touts Toyota’s all-electric bZ4X in a video that incorporates his Asian-American heritage with his love of action-adventure movies.
Fuel business growth
When YouTube is integral to your video strategy, it can consistently achieve business outcomes, from inspiration to intent.
Research shows that viewers in the U.S. rank YouTube as the No. 1 platform to research or make a decision about a purchase,3 showcasing its integral role in the shopper journey.
In terms of advertising efficiency, YouTube delivers 2.3X higher long-term ROAS than paid social and 4.5X higher ROAS versus streaming TV,4 driving stronger returns on every marketing dollar.
Amid an increasingly dynamic and fragmented media landscape, YouTube stands as a testament to the power of authentic creativity, deep cultural connection, and measurable business impact. It’s not just keeping pace with the future of marketing; it’s actively defining it by empowering brands to connect, create, and grow in truly impactful ways.
Check out this playlist to view all of the ads mentioned above. For more inspiration, visit YouTube’s best in ads site.
