Here’s the thing about movie trailers — they can be viewed in so many places, in so many ways, that there isn’t an exact science to discovering which one has been viewed the most.
Sure, there are plenty of (repeated) lists out there telling which ones were viewed the most in the first 24 hours of release, but digging deeper, to see just how many times the official Avengers: Endgame trailer was actually viewed isn’t as easy as searching the most popular videos on YouTube.
Take this article in Variety — a trusted source — which states that the Spider-Man: No Way Home trailer is number one of all time, with 355.5 million global views in the first 24 hours after its release.
Where does that number come from? How can global views of a movie trailer be tracked? The source behind the number is Marvel Studios, but they don’t say how they measured or verified this.
It’s certainly not just by YouTube count, but let’s run through this one movie real quickly.
Searching for “Spider-Man: No Way Home trailer” on YouTube and filtering by view count, here’s what we get and what it adds up to:
- 86M views for an official trailer posted by Sony Pictures Entertainment
- 84M views for an official teaser trailer posted by Sony Pictures Entertainment
- 76M views for an official trailer posted by Sony Pictures Entertainment
- 50M views for another official teaser trailer posted by Sony Pictures Entertainment
- 40M views for an official trailer posted by Marvel Entertainment
- 28M views for an official teaser trailer posted by Marvel Entertainment
There are some other videos mixed in on the imperfect search (including a fan film called Spider-Man: Lost Cause that has a whopping 60 million views), but those six hits add up to 364 million views. And that’s across six different versions of a trailer or teaser, not just one solo video.
That doesn’t include videos streaming perhaps on the official movie website when it first came out, or watching it on other services, or the views taken in anywhere else. So, if the first trailer hit 355.5 million global views in one day, shouldn’t some of these YouTube hits be near even a billion by now?
Regardless, we did the searching based on the most popular titles and view counts we could find to gather together this list, based solely on YouTube views on those two official Marvel channels listed above, and extrapolating that to the world.
Enjoy watching them all over again if you’d like!
15. Thor: Ragnarok — Teaser Trailer (2017)
Marvel Entertainment — 52 million views
By blending the list from the two different channels, we arrive at a combo top 15 that includes basically the movies you’d expect to see here – or maybe some surprises.
The one video above has 52 million views. Yet, when you enter Thor: Ragnarok – Teaser Trailer in the YouTube search bar, you get a second Thor: Ragnarok official trailer with 81 million views, which (spoiler) will be farther up on the list. Then there are other trailer versions on channels such as Movieclips Trailers which range in views but all hover around 3-4 million views. So if we made a list of the films with the most watched trailers, that would be a bit different — and hella time consuming — as we added up all the trailer views across YouTube.
Let’s carry on this path then, marking each edition of a video as its own entity.
As for the trailer itself, the glee around Taika Waititi’s take on Thor made audiences back in 2017 extremely excited after the very drab takes on Thor — both the character and the movies — before this third entry.
The trailer shows us a lot of color, and whimsy, set against some serious stakes (plus, Jeff Goldblum!).
Another spoiler, Thor: Ragnarok isn’t the only film appearing twice on the list!
14. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness — Official Trailer (2022)
Marvel Entertainment — 59 million views
This one hooks you right away with Dr. Stephen Strange’s eye popping open and him saying “Every night, I dream the same dream.”
With audiences ever so ready to see more of the multiverse that has been hyped up for years leading up to Spider-Man: No Way Home — which Strange also appeared in — it’s no wonder that people wanted to watch this trailer a few times to see the Easter eggs and hints at what would actually be in the movie.
To be honest, though, with the long-awaited Strange sequel following so much other build up, including WandaVision, it’s surprising this video isn’t higher!
13. Captain Marvel — Official Trailer (2018)
Marvel Entertainment — 61 million views
This is a surprise. Not because of the movie or the character, but because the actual trailer isn’t too exciting. We get Captain Marvel falling and landing on a Blockbuster Video, which is cool. But then it’s a lot of her looking around, confused in this new world, before we get into the good stuff.
It’s a bit of a different pace from most Marvel trailers, which is a plus, but overall, the trailer isn’t anything spectacular.
12. Venom — Official Trailer 2 (2018)
Marvel Entertainment — 73 million views
There’s a trailer intro to the trailer here, letting us know this is a new Venom trailer. Which, seems unnecessary, but OK.
It’s a good one just because we get to watch Tom Hardy do his thing, and we see Venom doing his creepy and captivating thing. If you were interested in Venom at all, this likely hooked you into a theater-going experience.
11. Spider-Man: No Way Home — Official Trailer (2021)
Marvel Entertainment — 76 million views
Right into the reveals here, with Doc Ock there immediately and — oh — this must be Sony’s thing, because the trailer has an intro trailer just like Venom did.
Spider-Man standing in the rain, cool call back and imagery. Dr. Strange shows up, we get some of the mind-bending reality multiverse scene teases, but all-in-all, it’s a fine trailer but more so because of the predictions that were flying around before the movie, more than anything, the trailer delivers.
10. Thor: Ragnarok — Official Trailer (2017)
Marvel Entertainment — 81 million views
Straight into the action for this one. Following the teaser trailer, which set us up to really want to know what Thor and Taika were up to, this trailer delivers on a lot of action, vivid imagery, and setting up a wicked-looking big bad, all under one minute. The trailer goes on for another minute and a half, with Loki, Hulk, and even Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie appearing to fans’ delight.
9. Spider-Man: No Way Home — Teaser Trailer (2021)
Marvel Entertainment — 84 million views
A very, very slow build, mostly giving us Peter Parker and Mary Jane, before we launch into all the stakes we know now.
A bit too much of the trailer is the scene between Parker and Strange as he asks for help casting a spell so the world forgets he is Spider-Man, with not nearly enough action here, but between this and the earlier entry, that’s more than 160 million views.
8. Venom — Official Trailer (2018)
Marvel Entertainment — 85 million views
There’s a lot of setup here and introductions to why Eddie is a “loser” as Venom calls him.
Eventually we get to see our “anti-hero” figuring it out as Venom has invaded his whole being, but it’s just OK.
7. Spider-Man: Far From Home — Official Trailer (2019)
Marvel Entertainment — 86 million views
Tom Holland actually introduces the trailer. Then we get to see Spidey doing some cool things and slinging around, with Happy there of course to try and get him in line and under control.
We get a Nick Fury appearance and then a lot of destruction and some Mysterio, which does a nice job sucking us in to want to know what in the world is happening so far from home.
6. Captain America: Civil War — Trailer 2 (2016)
Marvel Entertainment — 87 million views
There’s a lot of set up here and composition that is leading the audience to fall into a trance of a storyline that’s bigger than anything and anyone, without giving us anything too thrilling. Probably because it’s the second trailer it needed to deviate away from the action scenes and suspense of a full-on MCU battle, but in hindsight it’s nothing to get goosebumps about.
5. Avengers: Age of Ultron — Teaser Trailer (2014)
Marvel Entertainment — 92 million views
We even get an MPAA message before this trailer, which you don’t see much of in recent times.
Being that it was the second Avengers movie at the time, the stakes are set up nicely, and the introduction of who and what will be introduced during this team-up are pretty solid for a 2014 trailer.
And of course, we get the big bad reveal at the end just before the title credits and release date, as this trailer hit in October 2014 and the movie didn’t drop until May 2015.
4. Avengers: Infinity War — Official Trailer (2018)
Marvel Entertainment — 104 million views
It’s a bit on the nose to start, with a depiction of the world being turned upside down before some of our heroes gaze toward the sky with a bit of worry in their eyes.
Cut scenes galore, showing us all our heroes in different stages, and dropping them on screen almost one by one to set things up. We get a little bit of Thanos, too.
Then the build-up and action and things crashing, with heroes in peril, leading up to showing us glimpses of the final battle scenes to come.
It delivers what we needed here, with a great ending shot of Captain America vs. Thanos before the title screen. We even get a “post-credits” trailer scene with Spider-Man and Dr. Strange!
3. Avengers — Official Trailer (2018)
Marvel Entertainment — 106 million views
A devastated Tony Stark sitting beside his Iron Man helmet, feeling distraught. Just talking, dreaming of being rescued but sensing it’s hopeless (of course it’s not), and leaving a message. Quite a different take for a trailer that’s been building and building to give us the first Avengers film after seeing so many other MCU characters in action already, there is more exposition than you’d expect.
Oh wait, the trailer is misnamed, this is actually for Avengers: Endgame, so all the exposition and narrative makes way more sense now 😉 Kinda funny that Marvel didn’t even label their own trailer properly, but yeah, the release year definitely gave it away.
And now we’ll know if someone just straight-up repurposes or rips off this list without reading it if they don’t update this header to say Endgame 😜
2. Avengers: Endgame — Official Trailer (2019)
Marvel Entertainment — 151 million views
Between these two Endgame trailers, there are 257 million views.
Some cool use of black and white here, showing what happened in the last Avengers film, Infinity War, with heroes disappearing with The Snap.
It ends with them assembling – I mean, that’s what Avengers do, ammiright? Then, another post-credits style scene with Thor and Captain Marvel.
1. Avengers: Infinity War — Official Trailer (2017)
Marvel Entertainment — 255 million views
The leader, by far, in our countdown, the official Infinity War trailer beats out the top Endgame one by 100 million views.
Not dissimilar to ones we’ve already seen, we get Tony Stark seeming demoralized, some heroes looking down on their luck and downtrodden, but then we get more Spider-Man after his appearance in Civil War, plus Loki and the Tesseract, Thanos, and some pretty cool set-up of the battle scenes and epic fighting to come.
And we get a glimpse of Thor with the Guardians of the Galaxy at the end!
Still waiting for that trailer, which would surely break every record out there.