The sales numbers indicate that people liked Cyberpunk 2077, but what gamers in Australia really liked was those ads with Keanu Reeves.
You can track how much hype there was for Cyberpunk 2077 right up until its rocky, bug-filled launch just by tracking our coverage of the game here on The Brag.
There were reports on Keanu Reeves’ motorbikes in the Cyberpunk 2077, photo mode, the delays, the overreaction of gamers to said delays, genital stuff, when the game unlocks in Australia, leaks, reviews (including our own), epilepsy triggers, and finally, more genital stuff.
In short, it’s perhaps an understatement to say that folks were hyped for the game – and an understatement to say that the hype completely died down when the game launched to some pretty major backlash.
So what’s the point I’m trying to get at here? Well the ridiculous levels of hype right up before Cyberpunk 2077 launched was almost unheard of for video game, so much so that the Aussie video gaming community were more or less obsessively watching and re-watching ads for the game on YouTube.
Every year YouTube publishes its “YouTube Ad Leaderboard,” which is exactly as it says on the tin – it lists the most popular ads Aussies enjoyed watching on YouTube over the last 12 months.
Now normally this thing is only useful for those working in advertising. But for the 2020 leaderboard, there was one exception that highlighted just how crazy the Cyberpunk 2077 hype got and how much love there is for Keanu Reeves (which is probably why folks keep trying to have sex with his character in the game).
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The YouTube Ad Leaderboard is usually populated for ads for Apple or Samsung products, cars, or funny shit. This year was no different as the most popular Aussie YouTube ad was that one for Menulog starring Snoop Dogg, followed by a Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 2 ad and a Sportsbet piss take on the Olympics.
But there’s one glaring exception to the usual list of suspects sitting above ads for Subway, R.M Williams and Mercedes-AMG at a surprising fifth place on the leaderboard – a Cyberpunk 2077 ad starring Keanu Reeves.
Specifically, that ‘Seize The Day’ ad that was released in October 2020 when Cyberpunk 2077 was still scheduled for a November 19th launch.
This is a pretty big deal because the only other game that’s manage to make the cut on this Ad Leaderboard was a 2017 ad for Clash Royale, demonstrating the appeal of Keanu and how the hype machine can go crazy.
And based on the sales numbers the game has racked up since its release, it seems like these ads ultimately worked on both Aussies and the rest of the world.
Check out Cyberpunk 2077 ad starring Keanu Reeves that gamers in Australia went nuts for:
