Ad agency turns Youtube views into cars

Dutch agency has worked with one of the largest car manufacturers to launch an ad campaign that trades YouTube views for new cars.

Marketers know that YouTube clicks are a valuable currency. Now, Amsterdam-based ad agency J. Walter Thompson has found a way to turn clicks into actual currency with its pay with views campaign for Opel. The innovative campaign works like this: consumers borrow one of Opel’s new ‘Online Edition’ cars for a test drive and use the car to create a video. They then upload the video to YouTube. If the video earns enough clicks, Opel will accept the views instead of cash as payment and the video creator gets a free car.

Opel has three Online Edition cars available for the campaign – the Karl Rocks, the Corsa and the Astra, with every 40 views worth 1 Euro. The price of each model varies, so that it works out as 589,900 views to buy the Karl Rocks, 739,600 for the Corsa, and 922,800 for the Astra. The campaign began earlier this year, and the first person to earn a car using views was Dutchman Yuri Schuurkes, whose video has received 5.1 million views to date, enough to earn him an Opel Astra.

YouTube says the campaign is a “world first” for the site, and JWT has found the campaign so successful in the Netherlands that Opel is looking to roll it out across Europe. Advertisers are always on the lookout for novel ways to market products. We have recently seen some unusual marketing with a campaign that let Instagram users eat their posts and an ad you can only see outdoors. Can we now expect to see more ad campaigns that trade clicks for products?