What is viral video?
A viral video is a brief video clip, usually no longer than a few minutes, which gains greater exposure as viewers share it via internet or mobile technologies.
The mediums through which viral video is distributed include email, instant messaging, blogs and video sharing websites, the most popular of which, by some distance, is YouTube.
People often make and upload home-made video clips or upload TV, film or music clips for entirely non-commercial reasons – invariably ‘for a laugh’, nostalgia or simply because they want to share something they really like with others.
But increasingly viral videos are also used as a marketing tool, as a form of viral marketing, which harnesses social networks to create brand awareness, sell products and promote events, films or bands.
Viral videos are used as a marketing tool which harnesses social networks to create brand awareness, sell products and promote events, films or bands
How popular is viral video as a method of advertising?
What isn't in doubt is that advertisers are waking up to the waning power of traditional advertising and the enormous potential of viral advertising.
However, Big Business rarely understands and successfully imitates bottom-up revolutions straightaway.
Companies are justifiably wary about representing their brand in an environment where many viral videos have spawned parodies and been ridiculed on forums. However, although these spoofs often provoke furious legal threats, companies occasionally relent, sometimes even encouraging their propagation to help raise brand awareness.
Sometimes it’s difficult to tell whether it’s a joker doing the spoofing or the company themselves.
Why does viral video have such enormous marketing potential?
Saturated with hackneyed TV ads, billboards and junk mail, the consumer is increasingly weary of traditional advertising methods. To get their attention many brands have made tentative forays, with varying degrees of success, into this exciting new medium.
Companies that can replicate the success of amateurs whose videos, often made on camera-phones, notch up thousands of views, can achieve wide-reaching brand exposure at very little cost.
All the marketeer has to do is produce a video, post it on a video sharing website and email the link to a number of people.
Thereafter the video – so long as it is effective – will amass ‘hits’ without any additional investment of time or money on the company’s part. This is because its popularity is perpetuated by the viewers, who pass on the link to their colleagues or friends through email or instant messaging.
Essentially, viral videos work in the same way as word-of-mouth marketing, albeit the mode of transmission is digital rather than verbal.
This contrasts sharply with TV or radio advertisements, which are charged on a per-broadcast basis and reach only the audience watching or listening at the time of airing.
Why would anyone do the marketeers’ job for them?
People only forward on links to viral videos that shock them, confound them, make them think, or, more often than not, make them laugh. A viral video is only ‘contagious’ – can only spread easily – if the viewer enjoys watching it.
How much exposure, and how quickly, can a video get?
Basic mathematics dictates that word of an entertaining video will spread at an exponential rate, registering a huge volume of hits rapidly.
Let’s say that of eight people who initially see a video, half deem it worthy of forwarding to friends and colleagues. If these four people each forward the link to eight addresses, then 32 people will receive it.
Repeat these ratios and you’ll see exponential rises in recipients in every round of forwarding: 128, 512, 2,448, 9,792, 39,168, 156,672, and so on…
It’s easy to see how a popular video can quickly register hundreds or even thousands of views.
