Late last week, Visible Measures released its quarterly Branded Video Report for Q2 '14, finding that branded videos were watched 2.8 billion times, an increase of over 50% vs. Q2 '13. The big driver of the record quarterly views was the World Cup, with videos related to it accounting for 19%, or almost 555 million of the views.

Nike was by far the biggest winner of World Cup related branded videos, with nearly 259 million True Reach views during the quarter, 84% of which were from its eight World Cup videos. Nike wasn't even an official World Cup sponsor, but its videos received 2.5x the 103.7 million views of adidas, which was the official sponsor and landed the brand in 3rd place for the quarter.

Nike's "Risk Everything" campaign accounted for 117.8 million of its views, with its "Winner Stays" 4 minute, 12 second video taking up the majority of the views. Nike's "The Last Game" campaign also drove 83.7 million views, making it the second most viewed campaign of the quarter.

Rounding out the top 5 brands for Q2 were Samsung in 2nd place with 184.6 million views (with 41% from its World Cup videos, though it wasn't an official sponsor either), Google in 4th place with 82.2 million views (primarily due to its April Fools' Day campaign, "Pokemon Challenge") and Dove in 5th place with 62.3 million views (mainly based on its "Patches" campaign).

Nike's outstanding performance, as well as Samsung's, underscores three key takeaways related to branded video. First is the power of big events, like the World Cup, to drive audience attention to branded videos. Related, whereas in the past, the only way for a brand to get mindshare around a big event was to be an official sponsor, online video has opened up a parallel marketing channel that allows savvy brands that AREN'T sponsors to capitalize on awareness of the event.

Last, and perhaps most importantly, is that brands can at least partially offset today's rampant ad-skipping by creating compelling, entertaining brand content that will actually be sought out by consumers. It's not easy to break through, nor is it inexpensive, but it is possible.

All of the Visible Measures numbers are based on its True Reach methodology, with combines both brand-driven and audience-driven viewing. The full report can be downloaded here.