In January, a political ad — actually, three — ranked among YouTube's 10 most-watched ads for the first time in history, delivering millions more views to campaigns than to the best commercials corporate America had to offer.
And in the early caucus and primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada, the streaming giant's open pool of reserved ad time did something it had never done: It sold out, a sign that candidates yearned so deeply to reach voters’ cell phones that they wanted to snatch up every YouTube second money could buy.