Social video advertising firm Unruly Media has unveiled a chart which shows which video ads were most shared on the internet in 2011. Top of the pile was Volkswagen”s Darth Vader ad, The Force.

Created by LA agency Deutsch, The Force is “the most shared branded video of all time, attracting an incredible 4.71 million social media shares and 46.05 million views since its release on February 2, just days prior to Super Bowl Sunday,” says Unruly. “Other brands appearing in the top 20 include T-Mobile, Kia, Nissan, Nestle, Carlsberg and Pepsi.”

According to Unruly, one of the most significant trends to come out of the 2011 end-of-year data was the “staggering increase in the social video shared online. In 2011, the top 20 ads generated 25 million shares, a nearly five-fold increase from 2010 levels. The ratio of views to shares is even more interesting: In 2010, one in 39 people who viewed video content went on to share it online. This year, the ratio was around 10 to one.

“The fact that the top ranking video this year earned close to eight times more shares than last year”s winning ad is proof of the rise of the epic ad in 2011,” said Unruly COO Sarah Wood. “More brands are realising the potential of social video to build a high-impact, long-term emotional connection with their audience.”

After VW, the next best performer was DC Shoes: Ken Block”s Gymkhana Four; The Hollywood Megamercial.

[Note: Unruly is a leading exponent of social video advertising. With offices in New York, San Francisco, London, Berlin, Paris, Stockholm, Amsterdam, and Sydney, Unruly has delivered, tracked & audited 1.34bn video views and executed 1,400+ social video campaigns for brands and agencies. Its 2011 Rankings were based on the number of shares on Twitter, Facebook and the blogosphere as opposed to number of views. As such, it is a measure of the ad”s virality, as opposed to a measure of eyeballs, ranking ads by pass-on – not the more passive video consumption metric].