Seasonal Spots Dominate Ads List

The holidays are in full swing, with seasonally themed ads taking the first three spots in the weekly Most Engaging Auto Ads ranking, powered for WardsAuto by iSpot.tv.

In first place on the list is a Lexus ad in which a young boy, coached by his father, requests a new LX 570 from the mall Santa. Ford is in the No.2 spot with a commercial touting the year-end deals available. The ad is set to music by Imagine Dragons and gets viewers in the holiday spirit by showing how different Ford models can enrich festive situations, such as picking out and bringing home a Christmas tree.

In third place is an ad from Toyota in which a group of friends and family uses Toyota trucks to haul tons of Christmas lights to a field and then spell out a special message for a woman flying home from military duty.

Rounding out the chart are spots from Volvo for the S90 and the ubiquitous Mazda CX-9 ad narrated by “Breaking Bad” actor Aaron Paul. The enduring popularity of the Aaron Paul Mazda ads is evident not only from their continuing high engagement levels, but also from their view rates (percentage of an ad that, on average across all airings, is watched to completion). The auto industry average hovers around 82%. This week’s ranked CX-9 ad has a view rate of just under 97%.

Attention analytics company iSpot.tv tracks TV ads in real-time across more than 10 million smart TVs, and allows customers to monitor social actions, search activity and online video views associated with TV spots across Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google, Bing and Yahoo!.

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1. Lexus December to Remember Sales Event TV Spot, 'Mall Santa'

10.44% Digital Share of Voice, 92k Earned Online Views

2. Ford Year End Event TV Spot, 'Smart Bonus' Song by Imagine Dragons

8.24% Digital Share of Voice, 231 Earned Online Views

3. Toyota Toyotathon TV Spot, 'Right Light' Song by Perfume Genius

8.14% Digital Share of Voice, 7k Earned Online Views

4. Volvo S90 TV Spot, 'The Open Road'

4.72% Digital Share of Voice, 34k Earned Online Views

5. 2016 Mazda CX-9 TV Spot, 'Driving Matters: Crafted'

3.28% Digital Share of Voice, 27k Earned Online Views