One of my favorite hobbies is watching commercials on YouTube. It started when I took an advertising class in college and we had to do our own commercial. So to get ideas, I went to YouTube and watched commercials there from other countries.

I found the search experience fun as from YouTube I could see how the ads look in other places and compare them to the commercials I see in the country I live in. I was able to get creative and clever ideas from some of them. However, not all commercials are good, because most of them are horrible. Seeing poorly done TV commercials makes me feel smarter because I figured I could do better than that.

Most of my favorite commercials are for the Super Bowl, the big game in the US, watched by millions if not billions of people. Due to the large number of people it attracts, big brands such as Coca Cola, Pepsi and Budweiser take advantage of this to launch their television commercials. Take note, they pay about $3 million just for a 30-second ad, and they need to make sure their commercials are highly effective so they don’t waste the millions they paid.

Some of my favorite commercials from recent Super Bowl games are the E*Trade baby talking about how he bought stocks, the ugly girl from Planter’s Cashew, the overachieving David Abernathy from Cars.com, and those bugs that steal a Coke bottle.

Another set of commercials that I love to watch are the ones that won awards at Cannes Lions. Of course, they couldn’t have won if there is nothing unique about them. Like the Ikea lamp ad. It was a commercial that made viewers sympathize with the lamp that its owner threw away. The background music, the cinematography made sure the viewers felt bad about the dropped lamp. Then, just a few seconds before it ended, a man appeared on screen telling viewers that they are crazy to pity something that is not alive. A little negative in a way, but hey, viewers will surely laugh that they felt sad seeing the lamp. Also the Ikea lamp is better than the lamp that was dumped.

The ads that I mentioned are just some of those great ads that can be seen online. Some of these ads are not only great inspiration for future ad creators, but also great stress relievers, especially the funny commercials.