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Budweiser Is Running Away With the Super Bowl, Again

For the second year in a row, Budweiser has the most popular Super Bowl ad on the Web. Guess why?

Peter Kafka covers media and technology, and their intersection, at Vox. Many of his stories can be found in his Kafka on Media newsletter, and he also hosts the Recode Media podcast.

You thought the Seahawks won last year’s Super Bowl? Hahahaha. No! Last year’s victor was Budweiser, which convinced most of the Internet to watch its Super Bowl TV ads.

And it looks like the company is poised to do the same thing this year. ISpot, which tracks the way TV ads perform on the Web, says that as of last night, Bud brands accounted for three of the 10 most popular Superbowl ads on YouTube and Facebook.

Last year, Budweiser’s best-performing beer ad featured a dog. Because, duh. Guess what Bud’s best-performing beer ad features this year?

You are smart!

http://youtu.be/xAsjRRMMg_Q

The ad above has racked up 41.9 million views on YouTube and Facebook, according to iSpot. Other high-performers this year include T-Mobile’s spot featuring entrepreneur Kim Kardashian, a dystopian Bud Light/Pac-Man ad and a bunch of pantsless Minions, from Universal’s* upcoming movie of the same name (which looks pretty good, especially if you’ve had to watch the “Despicable Me” movies many times and concluded that they’re really quite good).

Alright. So, people like puppies. What’s new?

This part, actually: Facebook, which has lately become a gigantic video machine, is now a big Super Bowl ad platform, as well. According to iSpot, Super Bowl video plays are up about 60 percent this year and 40 percent of those views now come from Facebook.

This hasn’t escaped advertisers. All but five of iSpot’s top 20 Super Bowl ads are running on Facebook. And Facebook accounts for 62 percent of the Budweiser puppy ad views.

* Comcast owns NBCUniversal, which is a minority investor in Revere Digital, Recode’s parent company.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.