It only took Vietnam two years to prove it is a lucrative market for YouTube advertisers, as the country has joined Thailand to occupy half of the ten most watched ads on the video-sharing platform in Asia Pacific this year.

Vietnam has two ad campaigns and Thailand has three among the ten videos honored in the “2015 YouTube Asia Pacific Ads Leaderboard” Google released on Sunday.

A music video made to promote Unilever’s OMO Matic laundry product for Vietnamese consumers topped the list, whereas a promotion clip for chotot.vn, considered Vietnam’s craigslist, stood at the sixth place.

The Thai ad campaigns, created by such advertisers as Unilever’s Knorr and Sunsilk, and CP Brand secured the #7, #8 and #9 positions in the list that also includes ad videos by LG, Samsung and Hyundai.

The OMO Matic ad, starring local pop idol Son Tung, garnered more than 14 million views, including six million during the first 20 days, while the Chotot footage, the ninth episode of a series, was viewed 8.8 million times this year.

The top ten videos were viewed for more than 3.5 million hours, or 400 years, in total in 2015, according to Forbes.

The YouTube Ads Leaderboard showcases the most creative ads that people in certain locations choose to watch each month, according to Google.

Ads are determined by an algorithm that factors in paid views, organic views and audience retention, or how much of a video people watched.

The Internet giant also releases the year-end global and regional versions of the YouTube Ads Leaderboard at the end of each year.

YouTube only marked its official presence in Vietnam and Thailand in 2013 and the dominance in the 2015 YouTube Ads Leaderboard are significant for both countries, according to Forbes.

The Southeast Asian nations are also among the ten biggest markets worldwide for total viewing time, according to Google.

Vietnam logged 120 percent year-on-year growth in viewing time, and Thailand, 70 percent, Forbes said, citing Google statistics.

“This year’s Leaderboard demonstrates how YouTube can help brands break barriers,” Simon Kahn, chief marketing officer with Google Asia Pacific, said in a statement

The video-sharing platform, which Google bought for U$1.65 billion in 2006, can help “propel new local brands to the top of consumers’ minds, like Chotot’s funny web series, or [help] established brands develop iconic ads that travel across borders like Message to Space from Hyundai,” Kahn added.

It has been discovered that ads that last longer than 60 seconds result in higher engagement, according to YouTube’s analysis of ad campaigns that ran on the platform between January and June.

“Brands have understood that when they create great content that takes the time to tell a complete story, viewers will be interested,” Kahn said.

“The results of the Leaderboard are clear: with nine out of ten ads lasting longer than 60 seconds, it shows that well-crafted stories resonate best with consumers.”

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