The 20 Most-Shared Super Bowl Spots of All Time

The ability of Super Bowl commercials to spread far and wide online in the days and weeks following the game (or even sometimes before the game starts) is becoming an ever-bigger component of their value. Volkswagen's "The Force" commercial is the most obvious example. Released online a week before Super Bowl XLV, it's now approaching the 50 million view mark on YouTube—which is almost half the number of viewers who watched the game on Fox. Below, courtesy of Unruly Media, is a list of the 20 most-shared Super Bowl ads of all time. Not coincidentally, many of them are recent ones, including the two VW spots from last year (the Black Beetle ad was the other) and no fewer than four Doritos "Crash the Super Bowl" spots from recent games. This is due to the exponential growth of online video sharing in recent years (as seen in the Viral Spiral we posted in December). But there are also some classic spots that have stood the test of time, and continue to be shared—most notably, Apple's "1984," which clocks in at No. 14 even though it was made 21 years before YouTube was around, and Budweiser's 9/11 tribute from the 2002 Super Bowl, which is second only to "The Force" on this list. There are two other Bud spots (sorry, no Bud Light), cameos by EDS, Coke, E*Trade, Bridgestone and Reebok's Terry Tate, and three movie trailers. There aren't that many celebrities, although you'll notice that Eminem and Justin Bieber each make two appearances on the list. (Em stars in his two 2011 spots for Lipton and Chrysler; the Biebs hawks Best Buy and his own concert film). Check out the full list after the jump.