It's one thing to sit in your grubby little basement and enjoy the year's best commercials online by yourself. It's another thing to share them with others. Unruly Media's Viral Video Chart tracks the latter—shares rather the views, a metric that favors pass-around versus overall exposure. Last night in London, Unruly unveiled the world's 20 most-shared commercials of 2011. Check them out below. There are plenty of familiar spots—No. 1 is no surprise—but some unexpected ones as well. Unruly says one of the more notable trends of 2011 was a significant increase in shares compared to views. In 2011, the top 20 ads generated 25 million shares, a nearly five-fold increase from 2010 levels. The ratio of shares to views is interesting, too. In 2010, one in 39 people who viewed video content went on to share it online. This year, one in 10 did. "The fact that the No. 1 ranking video this year earned close to eight times more shares than last year's winning ad is just further proof of the rise of the epic ad in 2011," says Unruly COO Sarah Wood. "More brands are realizing the potential of social video to build a high-impact, long-term emotional connection with their audience."

Continue to next page →