The various Google brands are looking back on 2017, and YouTube is revealing its top videos of the year. That includes the “game trailer” ad category, which features familiar blockbusters throughout the top 10. But it is mobile games that dominated the top of the chart, with Clash of Clans and Despicable Me: Minion Rush taking two of the top three spots.
Before I get to the list, it’s worth pointing out that Google did not consider something like Super Mario Odyssey for this list. I’ve reached out to YouTube for the exact criteria, but this is apparently its top 10 most-viewed game trailers that are also YouTube ads. If you included Mario and its 23 million views, it would have finished higher than the majority of Google’s list (thanks to Twitter user Pacotromas for the heads up). The below top 10, however, is a combination of organic and paid views on YouTube. I’ll update this if Google provides any more details on what it considered for this list.
Here’s the full list of the most-viewed game trailers on YouTube in 2017:
- Clash of Clans: Hog Rider 360°, 58.0 million views
- Official Call of Duty: WWII Reveal Trailer, 21.8 million views
- Despicable Me: Minion Rush – Google Play Trailer, 18.4 million views
- Star Wars Battlefront 2: Official Gameplay Trailer, 14.2 million views
- Destiny 2 – “Rally the Troops” Worldwide Reveal Trailer, 12.9 million views
- Minecraft: Better Together Update is now live! Togetherness ACTIVATED!, 11.8 million views
- Halo Wars 2 War of Wits: The Sale, 11.3 million views
- GTA Online: Smuggler’s Run Trailer, 10.8 million views
- The Avengers Project Announcement Trailer, 8.7 million views
- PES 2017 Mobile Launch Trailer, 8.6 million views
More than anything, this list shows that brands are chasing after YouTube’s younger audience. I have never even heard of Despicable Me: Minion Rush. I didn’t know it was a thing, and it doesn’t even look like it is all that successful. In terms of revenue, it is barely in the top 1,000 highest-grossing iOS games, according to App Annie. But publisher Gameloft likely paid for a lot of those veiws, and it’s possible that the trailer showed up in the autoplay algorithm for kids looking up “minions” videos.
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Correction: I originally presented this as the most-viewed trailers on YouTube for 2017, but that’s not accurate. This list only considers YouTube ads, so it doesn’t include organic-only videos from companies like Nintendo that don’t pay for views. I apologize for the error.
