Everybody knows that when it comes to the web, it's all about views. Views are quite literally worth money.

So, for the introduction of the Online Edition, we turned YouTube views into a currency. By asking people in The Netherlands to film their Opel test drive, upload it to YouTube, promote their video - and then enabled them to use those views to buy a brand-new Opel Online Edition model.

Your video has to be special, because an Opel Online Edition isn't cheap. The KARL ROCKS Online Edition costs 589.900 views, the Corsa Online Edition 739.600 views and the Astra Online Edition 922.800 views.

On June 13th 2017, we launched this special campaign for the new Opel Online Edition.

Opel kicked of with a social video that clearly explains what Pay with views entails and what is expected of people, supported by examples of viral content in and around an Online Edition. The social video was boosted via YouTube with a Discovery strategy (targeting the homepage of the mobile app on YouTube).

On the campaign website people could learn everything about paying with views, and of course see the videos of test drive registrations of others.

The rest, best and largest part of the promotion in this campaign came via views of the test drive films of the Dutch themselves!

The results are pretty legendary. The campaign earned media worth €841.884,32 and attracted 34.4 million impressions (source: Carat Amsterdam). More than 97.000 people visited the campaign website. The Opel website had a 72% increase in visits compared with the same period in 2016. In the wake of the campaign, orders of the Online Edition Opel increased by 29%.

Dutchman Yuri Schuurkes was the first person in the world to ever buy a car with YouTube views (an astonishing 30 million organic views for an unpromoted test drive)!

And to top it all, we received a plaque from YouTube saying that the campaign film was the 2nd most viewed ad on YouTube in the Netherlands 2017!

As YouTube themselves said: ‘It’s a World’s First’.