By Zsarlene B. Chua, Reporter
Children’s milk brand Nido has topped the YouTube Philippine’s Ad Leaderboard for the first half of 2016 with its animated Mother’s Day ad, “A Mommy’s Sacrifice.”

“There was a lot of pressure for the team to up our game for 2016’s Mother’s Day,” said Paolo Fabregas, executive creative director of Publicis Manila, Inc., the advertising firm behind the video during the leaderboard reveal held on July 27 at Discovery Primea in Makati.
The three-minute ad has already amassed more than 11 million views as of this writing. Last year, for the same period, Nido also topped the charts with its “For a #1 Lola” ad.
The decision to do the ad using animation was a “wild card” which they ultimately made “to change the game,” Mr. Fabregas explained.
The Ads Leaderboard, which is released biannually, lists the top 10 brands with made-for-Web content that “performed the best through a combination of popularity ‘organic views’ and promotion ‘paid views,’” explained a press statement released for last year’s leaderboard results.
This is the second time since the second half of 2015 that all 10 spots were dominated by local ads.

Among the other ads included in the top 10 were Bonakid’s “Bonakid Pre-School 3+” TVC, which featured a catchy song, and Knorr’s short film titled “Sabaw at Pagsasama” which showed “how far-reaching the influence of mom is” according to Knorr brand manager, Marj Orosa. She added that the short film broke the mold of the usual Knorr ads which commonly feature a family at the table together. Instead, “Sabaw at Pagsasama” featured army trainees resolving their differences using tinola (chicken soup made with ginger and malunggay).
“The fact that people’s behavior is changing warrants advertisers to make sure [they] make harder-working and attention grabbing communication. This is the change in habit — people skipping [ads in YouTube] — is not just a digital issue but a marketing issue,” said Ken Lingan, Google Philippines’ country manager during the launch.
He added that there are two ingredients needed to make a YouTube ad “unskippable” as most ads provide the option to skip after the first five seconds: “be relevant and be creative.”
Below is the complete list of the YouTube Ads Leaderboard for the first half of 2016 (January to June).
1. Nido “A Mommy’s Sacrifice”
2. Bonakid “Bonakid Pre-School 3+” TVC
3. McDonalds “Tuloy Pa Rin”
4. Downy “Sofia’s Fan”
5. Bear Brand “Side A 30s TVCI BEAR BRAND Choco Milk Drink”
6. Whisper “Whisper All Day No Check!”

7. Tide “Tide! Todo-puti na kagulat-gulat! #TideTodoPuti”
8. Milo “#MomsNeverGiveUp” Full Version
9. Nescafe “When Minutes Turn Into Moments”
10. Knorr “Sabaw at Pagsasama (A Knorr Short Film)”