The energy drinks brand jumped one place from the previous year to finish ahead of Samsung and McDonald’s.

Red Bull’s sports and music videos generated over 14.5 million more shares than Samsung (12.5 million), while McDonald’s’ videos attracted 8.6 million shares.

Unruly said Red Bull’s "Always-on" strategy helped them achieve millions of video shares by releasing hundreds of videos throughout the year. The brand did not feature in Unruly’s most shared ads of the year list. 

Red Bull has been creating branded video content since the 90s and in 2007 launched Red Bull Media House as its in-house video production unit. 

Other brands to feature in Unruly’s top 10 most shared brands include Asus, the Australian Tourist Board, Almarai, Shell and Cadbury, as well as rivals Nike and Adidas. 

The rankings are based on the number of times that video ads published on Facebook and YouTube are shared on Facebook and what Unruly calls "the blogosphere". Unruly said the rankings are a measure of the ad’s online buzz or virality by volume of active pass-on rather than the passive, paid metric of video viewership. Data was collected from 1 January 2016 to 31 December 2016. 

Devra Prywes, Unruly’s senior vice-president of insights and marketing, US, said: "The winners hit the mark by creating highly emotional ads that resonated with viewers, resulting in high levels of engagement and sharing.

"We have a truly global list of top brands, many of which created videos specifically for and released in individual territories topping the list."

Red Bull will be awarded by Unruly at #TheUnrulies, a virtual awards show held later this month to celebrate the most successful video brands and campaigns of the year.

Unruly’s top 10 most shared video brands of 2016

1. Red Bull - 27,047,591 shares
2. Samsung - 12,481,540
3. McDonald's - 8,618,554
4. Australian Tourist Board - 6,417,279
5. Asus - 5,275,867
6. Nike - 5,002,131
7. Almarai - 4,556,429
8. Adidas - 4,512,703
9. Shell - 4,142,156
10. Cadbury - 4,082,750