Even before the next installment of its popular talking baby runs later today during the Super Bowl, E*Trade has already scored.

Through advance publicity and select print ads highlighting the “baby URL” <etrade.com/baby> (note 1), the online broker/banker has already landed more than 2 million views of the outtakes for today’s Super Bowl ad. And the clip was posted to YouTube just nine days ago (22 Jan. 2009). 

The E*Trade outtake clip (below) currently ranks 13th on the most-viewed videos of the month at YouTube, an extremely high level of popularity for a corporate-sponsored clip unrelated to music or film.

Demonstrating the power of making YouTube’s most-viewed list, the E*Trade outtake clip is only 100,000 views shy of surpassing the Trading Baby clip from the 2008 Super Bowl, a video that’s been online for a full year.

Here’s the view count as of 9:30 AM Pacific today (Feb. 1):

2.2 million   Trading baby from the 2008 Super Bowl (posted 1 Feb. 2008)

2.1 million   2009 outtakes (posted 22 Jan. 2009)

1.6 million   Banking baby from the 2008 Super Bowl (posted 1 Feb. 2008)

270,000      Mobile  baby (posted 30 June 2008)

All clips are posted on the company’s official YouTube page (see below).

E*Trade’s YouTube channel (link, 1 Feb. 2009)

E*Trade “baby” landing page six hours before the 2009 Super Bowl
(link, 1 Feb. 2009)

Note:
1. The E*Trade baby teaser ad ran in the 31 Jan. 2009 Weekend Wall Street Journal. The quarter-page ad, one of only six ads in the entire paper, ran on page W6 (West Coast edition).