GOAT Ads
The greatest ads of all time — ranked by you. Upvote what deserves the crown.
About the greatest ads of all time
This is a living ranking of the greatest ads of all time — the campaigns that stopped culture cold, reshaped an industry, or simply lodged themselves in a generation's memory. From Apple's "1984" to Nike's "Just Do It," from Old Spice to Cadbury's gorilla, every entry here earned its place by doing what almost no advertising does: getting people to actually pay attention, remember, and talk about it.
The list is not curated by an agency, a jury, or a nostalgic creative director. It is voted on by the readers of People Hate Ads* — marketers, creatives, and the merely curious — and the ranking updates in real time. Missed a classic? Submit it. Disagree with the top ten? Downvote it. This is advertising history the way it should be told: contested, opinionated, and open to anyone who cares.
What makes an ad great?
Be authentic. Tell a story worth sitting through. Entertain or teach. Aim for emotion. Be brave enough to look different from everyone else in the category.
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Mercedes-Benz · 2013
Hands move a chicken around. The chicken's head stays perfectly, eerily still. Cut to: that's how Mercedes' suspension works. A 60-second visual metaphor that you remember a decade later.
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Red Bull · 2012
Red Bull put Felix Baumgartner in a balloon, took him 39 km up, and let him fall. He broke the sound barrier in free fall and the livestream broke YouTube's record for concurrent viewers. The brand stopped being a drink and became shorthand for human limits.
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Nike · 2012
Nike ambushed the 2012 London Olympics without being an official sponsor by filming everyday athletes in towns called London all over the world. Greatness wasn't reserved for Usain Bolt — it was for the kid jogging through London, Ohio.
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Nike · 2012
Nike handed Casey Neistat a budget to make a FuelBand commercial. He spent it all flying around the world with a friend for ten days and turned in the receipts as the ad. A perfect early-YouTube-era pivot from polish to authenticity.
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Dollar Shave Club · 2012
Michael Dubin walked through a warehouse for 90 seconds, told you the razors were great, and made fun of Gillette. The video reportedly cost $4,500 and ended in a $1B Unilever acquisition five years later.
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Domino's · 2018
Domino's started fixing potholes in American towns and stamping the patches with its logo and the line "Oh yes we did." — because bumpy roads ruin pizza. A perfect insight-to-stunt loop: feels useful, looks absurd, photographs beautifully, and turned every repaired street into free, durable out-of-home advertising for the brand.
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Domino's Russia · 2018
Domino's Russia offered free pizza for 100 years to anyone who tattooed the logo on a visible spot. They had to kill the promo within days — too many people actually did it. Cheap stunt, infinite earned media, slightly horrifying.
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SpaceX / Tesla · 2018
In Feb 2018, SpaceX strapped Elon Musk's cherry-red Roadster to Falcon Heavy and launched it into a solar orbit with a mannequin named Starman at the wheel. It was a rocket test, a Tesla ad, and a piece of internet mythology all at once — and the car is still out there, drifting around the Sun.
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Volvo Trucks · 2013
Jean-Claude Van Damme does the splits between two reversing Volvo trucks while Enya plays. It's a product demo for dynamic steering — and one of the most-parodied B2B ads ever made.