To get people to share your campaign, you need to give them a reason to share. Here are four main reasons why people will do this:

– They think it is super relevant to someone they know.
If you have a niche campaign, people will often share it with those that they think it will interest. This can be on an individual sharing basis – I email my Dad all things triathlon-related as he is a moderately obsessed Ironman even though I have no personal interest. It can also be on a group basis – I often share new football ads on my footy club’s facebook group page.

- They want others to feel the emotion that they experienced.
If someone finds content funny, sad, or if it evokes any emotion, then it has the potential to be shared. If your ad can tap into someones emotions then they will want to share the experience with friends. This is especially relevant with humour – if your content is genuinely funny, it can spread far! Although shock can also spread pretty far!

- They want to share knowledge.
When sharing to large groups (such as a Twitter stream) people crave social currency – things that make them more valuable to follow and that can generate new followers. By sharing content that is academically interesting or industry relevant, people elevate their reputation as a curator. This works as people want to be seen as the first to know (and share) things, and also those who want to prove they are aware of content (by sharing or discussing it).

- Sharing it will provide a direct benefit.
Although paying people for referrals does not seem the most sophisticated mechanism for sharing, it still holds worth as a method. Think of nearly every facebook app you use – where you can earn points/credits/farmville dolla$ for inviting your friends to join in.

These reasons for sharing should be thought about when planning your campaign’s creative. Which is most appropriate for you brand and the audience you would like to reach?

It is also worth remembering that people can only share content that they have seen – the initial seed is necessary if you want viral success no matter how good the content.

Over the past few years, the size of websites has increased dramatically – driven partly by advertiser demand for shinier creatives, partly by a new generation of web designers who have never focused on file size, and partly by increased broadband penetration.

File size is very important.There used to be a rule of thumb that if your website didn’t load within three seconds then the user would probably leave your website – and I believe that rule still holds. For publishers, that means you are losing out on ad revenue (and visitors) by serving large file sizes.

Even if a viewer does stay on the website, a slow page can irritate the user – which can impact negatively on the brand who’s adverts are being shown.

Not only that, but many people pay for data by the Mb / Gb (especially mobile users) – sending your users larger data than they need costs them real money, and puts them off websites and advertisers.

File size is being overlooked though. If you’re from an ad agency or  a publisher, you are probably willing (and able) to pay for high-speed internet access. Website viewers, the people being advertised to, aren’t always in the same situation though.

As an example, I just opened up the website of a popular web publisher, and noticed the page (including ads) was over 8mb in size.

Here’s how long that website would take to load on a user’s computer, depending on what internet connection the user is on:

1. 8 seconds (10Mbps broadband – you’re probably on this)
2. 45 seconds (2Mbps broadband – most of your users are probably on approximately this speed)
3. 3 minutes 7 seconds (500Kbps broadband – quite a few of your users are probably on this)
4. 40 minutes (56Kbps modem – you’d be surprised how many are still on this)

Of course, people don’t just browse from their homes and offices – users browse from mobile phones and from mobile broadband.

Although mobile broadband can have very fast speeds (8Mbps), this speed goes down very fast if you’re on the move. Travelling on the train this weekend, I recorded my average broadband speed at about 120Kbps. For the page above, it takes about 20 minutes to load the page.

Here in the UK, up to 50% of users have mobile broadband – which means that 50% of viewers to this site  may be have to wait 20 minutes for a page before your ads load.

The situation gets worse in other countries. For example, in Australia the average speed is far lower. If you’re serving ads world-wide, you should be aware that they’re probably taking far longer to load in Australia than they are to users in the USA or UK.

So that’s the bad news about the industry in general, but here’s what we at the Viral Ad Network are doing about the issue:

How the Viral Ad Network reduces Ad size:

For all ads, we are able to do the following

1. We serve the majority of data through compressed protocols (See RFC 2616 – section 3.5)
2. All of our standard javascripts are made as compact as possible, using the most advanced javascript analysis tools available.
3. We only load our standard code when it’s required.
4. We split our ad serving into two parts – the part that’s the same for every ad, and the part that varies depending on which ad is being served. We tell browsers and proxies cache the former as much as possible (including across different websites), and only load the latter each time an ad is displayed.
5. Most Ethernet implementations have a MTU of approximately 1492 bytes. We endeavour to fit our initial ad code into a single TCP packet (we currently serve roughly 870 bytes of initial javascript).

In addition, for ad creatives which we have control over, we do the following:

1. For data feeds loaded from servers, we provide server-side rewriting that compacts the data as much as possible (and compresses it).
2. For images, we re-compress the images to reduce file size (Note re-compression is also a necessary precaution for security)
3. For video players we produce ourselves, we sometimes in-line any images into the swf. This reduces the number of requests that have to be made for the data.
4. We try to post-load data from the server whenever possible. This means the code required by the ad often doesn’t load until after the website and ads have loaded, and the user starts interacting with an ad.

Here at VAN, we work on a CPE (cost per engagement) model – which we think is a far fairer and suitable model for use in the online space (because let’s face it, “new” media surely needs “new” methods?)

This article on Social Media Today explains the differences very simply, and offers an example which is useful for advertisers who are unfamiliar with the potential extra value a CPE model creates.

1. More compact, faster, ads (file size for all our ads has been reduced noticeably, which should make them display faster on publisher sites)
2. Language specific targeting. Previously, users have seen ads based purely on their location. Now, ads may be targeted based on the user’s preferred language. For example, a French language ad may now be targeted at French speakers in Canada, in addition to users located in France.
3. Extra precision for targeting options – from now, certain ads may only target individual Operating Systems and devices, while this feature is in test, this may include users across 20 different operating systems.

Click here to view the embedded video.

COME ON ENGLAND!

http://dudecorp.com

making a basic flash video ad in actionscript 3.

This tutorial includes:

1. Calling the Viral Ad Network’s tracking from actionscript
2. Embedding an image inside flash
3. Inserting a basic video into flash

1. The Best Software Writing I by Joel Spolsky
2. The Smashing Book by Sven Lennartz and Vitaly Friedman
3. Designing The Moment – web interface design concepts in action by Robert Hoekman, Jr.
4. Ogilvy On Advertising by David Ogilvy
5. Attention And Interest Factors In Advertising by Harold J Rudolph
6. Hey Whipple, Squeeze This by Luke Sullivan

Let us know if you have any reading recommendations – leave a reply below, or send us a tweet.

You can find out more on interesting reading at the Rubber Republic Book Club or even sign up for the Rubber Library.

Click here to view the embedded video.

“But where is this young panda cub now?” I hear you ask. Why, residing in our office driving Andy’s Lego trucks of course.

This week’s charts have been dominated by the upcoming football world cup in South Africa and Britain’s Got Talent on ITV1. At the top of the brand chart is Nike’s World Cup 2010 campaign including a bearded Wayne Rooney! Also making the cut, but not the final Brazil 23 man squad, is Ronaldinho. Watch the ad below:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Sitting at the top of the UGC chart is a remix of Eastender Phil Mitchell’s infamous punch. The scene where Phil Mitchell punches Ben is beautifully crafted to the backdrop of Lethal Bizzle’s “Pow! (Forward)”. Watch the video below:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Check out the NMA Viral Brand Chart here

Check out the NMA Viral UGC Chart here