Apple’s iPad ad goes viral (with video)

Apple’s ‘Meet iPad’ [TV ad] had a pretty strong week with 2.4 million views, good enough for No. 2 on the viral chart. Why? Well, intense interest in the product, obviously, but also a shift in Apple’s strategy, which we also noticed last week,” Michael Learmonth reports for Advertising Age.

“Apple has had a YouTube channel since 2005, but only recently started using it. In the past, they’d focused on driving views on Apple.com, but for the iPad, they allowed the video to be embedded across the web, and views were distributed across 100 different placements, according to Visible Measures,” Learmonth reports. “Apple turned off commenting on its own videos, but a robust conversation bloomed around copies. Interestingly, this posting, with 2,422 comments as of this writing, was most-viewed; Apple’s official version was a distant second.”

Direct link via YouTube here.

Learmonth reports, “The most-viewed spot this week is a video that’s been hanging around the list since the Super Bowl, but got some extra juice from controversy. E-Trade was slapped with a $100 million lawsuit for ‘Milkoholic’ by Lindsay Lohan, and the surge to more than 3 million views.”

Full article, with the full list of “The Most-Watched Viral Video Ads from Last Week,” here.