Summary:

How much would you enjoy reporting to your client to tell them their average cost per view was £20? (even if you don’t phrase it like that, they will be calculating it).

Including a bought spend reduces their (and your) risk – in very worst case above you’d be entering that meeting reporting an average cost per view of around 1/40th of that price – that’s 40 times more ROI for them, and a more economically viable campaign.

What’s missing from the above?

Quite a bit – for a start, the more that your content is seen, the more likely it is to get organic views – so a bought media buy makes it far less likely that you’ll be hitting anywhere close to the worst case. For simplicity I’ve left this at the most basic calculation I could.

(Disclaimer: these numbers are estimated and may not necessarily reflect real-life results, which will depend on individual campaigns)

http://www.nma.co.uk/resources/viral-brand-chart

We were assigned by the lovely people at New Media Age to help them report on the brand-funded virals that are taking the net by storm. The chart is updated weekly and features exclusively on the NMA site. It is also the first of its kind to report on UK specific trends, not that we’re ones to brag!

Our chart acknowledges important viral indicators on top of basic views. This includes activity in social areas like Facebook and Twitter to help understand the extent of a campaign’s effect on web communities. We aim to maintain this as a cutting edge indicator of what is trending online, as well as a useful tool for those interested in social media.

To accompany the branded chart and to make best use of the reporting system, we have also launched a weekly chart for user-generated content, to help understand current trends and favourites across the wider internet. If you’re a fan of acronymys and abbreviations, this could be classed as VAN’s chart on NMA to report on UK UCG on the interweb, OMG! See this here:

http://www.nma.co.uk/resources/viral-ugc-chart

Let us know if you would like any more info. Everyone else, please enjoy responsibly!

There was, however, some very flawed reasoning behind the assumption that that was a reasonable thing to pay by – for an advertiser, the concept of display CPM assumes that every thousand displays of an ad will bring you the same income.

Of course this is not true – showing an ad to 1,000 teenagers will get you a different response from showing your ad to 1,000 parents for example (which of those is better depends on what you are selling).

Less obvious differences exist as well – people are more likely to splurge on large items just after pay-day than half way through the month, and they are more likely to take anti-drinking advertisements seriously on a sunday morning.

Looking beyond the users that view the ads, the internet has changed a lot since the ninties. XHR became widespread at the change of the millenium, allowing “AJAX” websites where the browser doesn’t have to load a new page every time the user did something. Suddenly an entire visit to a website could be done on a single page, and the meaning of “display” got more blurred.

The Viral Ad Network works on a different level – publishers are paid (and advertisers pay) for some kind of interaction with the ad – which may be a video starting playing, a video ending, a clickthrough to a different site, a player reaching the second level in a game, or just about anything. This metric is more closely linked to the value a publisher brings to the advertiser – but there are still variations in how much each viewer is worth to the advertiser.

These differences are carried through in the price that’s actually paid for a viewer – and these prices vary with supply and demand.

Essentially, the more demand advertisers have for viewers on specific sites / from specific countries, the higher the price per viewer will be. Likewise, the more supply there is of similar sites, the lower the price per viewer will be.

The job of our syndication system is to create a market where these prices change efficiently with supply and demand – so publishers get paid as much as they should be, and so advertisers aren’t paying more than they should. We spend a lot of time doing mathematical modeling of how our software works to ensure it fills this role correctly, and we’re proud of the level to which it works.

The proposition of the Viral Ad Network is a pretty simple one. We get your viral content, make it compatible with our network, then target it to the most relevant viewers in our audience for their enjoyment and consumption. We then pay our publishers for each time an engagement is made by a user on their site.

Below is a little tale of a campaign we worked on with our friends Cosmic Station & Associates to help launch the video assets that accompanied a wider PR campaign for the launch of the LG Crystal Mobile last year.

The presentation exemplifies how VAN works to launch, execute and report on your campaign and the type of results that can be achieved from a potent mix of good content and effective distribution.

Take a look, add a flake and pass around to your pals who have ace content. We’ll help give it an audience:

Some SEO basics

• – Google loves content

• – Google loves relevant content

• – Google loves well-structured content

• – Google loves very focused content

• – Google loves content that is loved by other people (i.e. content that is linked to)

• – Google loves content that is loved by popular people

• – Google loves content that is connected to other popular people

What this means when you blog – 11 tips on optimising for SEO

• 1) Write content that is very focused and relevant.

• 2) Make sure your blog post has a tight focused title – always thinking “what terms / question / phrase would someone search for?”  For example, if you’re wanting to target keen bloggers, then they’re always interested in finding out “how to optimise the seo of my blog” – so give it as the title of your post!

• 3) Make sure that the link of the blog post (which is often auto-generated from the title of the blog post) contains the relevant search terms.

• 4) Make sure the opening paragraph repeats those key phrases – as the opening 30 or so words are the ones are judged as being particularly important.

• 5) Make sure you you link key words / phrases in your blog, to key pages in your site.  For example if you write “Viral seeding is an effective way to gain brand awareness“.  Link the words “Viral seeding” to the relevant page in your site you’re trying to optimise.

• 6) Keep repeating key phrases and terms throughout the blog post, and remember to do the relevant linking.  Don’t go over board though – as this may look like SPAM to Google’s bots.

• 7) Include other relevant content in your blog posting – so maybe include a relevant YouTube video, or post a relevant (and tagged) image.  This all adds to the richness and relevance of the blog.

• To show your blog post is connected and influential, drop is some links to other more influential sites.  e.g. You may link to the Brand Republic site, if you’re talking about advertising – to indicate that you’re connected to other sites.

• 9) Once you’ve written your blog, make sure it’s linked to by other sites.  N.B. the more influential the site linking to you, the better.  So for example, Digg the blog via Digg.com, or link to the blog from another blog – e.g. the Team Rubber blog.  To do this you might do a weekly blog round up of the best Team Rubber postings.  You should also obviously Tweet the post – to optimise the opportunity for the blog being picked up by others.

• 10) Finally – remember to write interestingly and well.  After all, much of the success of your blog post will be down to the how people enjoy and share your blog / content.  If people think it’s great, then they’ll do the link sharing for you!

• 11) Finally #2 – consider how someone might find your post out of context, and make sure it ends with the right kind of call to action – e.g. you might write an end line along the lines of “If you’re interested in this, then you may be interested in the Viral Ad Network, which provides great fun ads for the best blogs and sites.  Check it out our Viral Ad Network here!“

A piece of content is said to “go viral” if it is spread around by those who see it – via word of mouth, Facebook, email, twitter or any other method of communication. (Actually, I personally prefer to use a more mathematical definition, but I’ll leave that out for your sanity).

So the desired result is that someone (let’s call him Hector) gets sent your content from a friend (let’s call her Janice).

Since this is a first-hand recommendation – Hector’s far more likely to appreciate your content than someone who sees it in an ad placement on the side of a page (or “Sponsored Links” on a search page) – and far more likely to convert to a sale/lead.

But how did Janice get your content in the first place? Well, Janice may have been sent the content by another friend (we don’t really need a name for this one, but you can call him Laurence if you want) – but then we can ask the same question about how Laurence  got the content – giving us the social media equivalent of the chicken and the egg problem.

Clearly someone (Janice / Laurence / someone else) must have seen this through some other means – and that’s where viral seeding comes in.

Just as you plant a seed and watch it grow into a plant, with viral seeding you plant your content on the web and watch it grow into viral content.

Of course you can’t just drop a seed randomly and expect it to grow – you need to nurture it, make sure the soil is fertile, and bring nutrients and water to help it thrive. The same goes for seeding online content – you need to bring it viewers before it can start to thrive in the viral garden .

So how do viral seeding companies achieve that? We bring your content to viewers with placements on sites over the web – scattering it far and wide to fertile communities who are more likely to watch (and, in turn, share) your content. We upload videos to the top video sharing sites, flash games to the top game sites, and we provide bought online media placements – charging only when someone views your content, so it’s always in our interest to place your content where people will choose to watch it.

So if you’re sitting on a great viral asset, why not give us a call – or use our campaign estimator to see the kind of sites we can place your content on.

In particular, I tested two different parameters – how likely users are to send content to another person, and the ratio of  “undirected connections” to “directed connections” in the graph.

How likely users are to send content on is a simple property to imagine, but if connections are directed or not is a more abstract concept…

In essence, this ratio measured the question “if Alice could send a viral to Bob, could Bob send this viral to Alice”.

The two extremes I gave at the time were Facebook and Bloggers – Facebook is at the “undirected” end (and was even more so at the time) – if Alice is friends with Bob on facebook, then Bob is friends with Alice.

Blogs were on the other end – if Alice reads Bob’s blog, then there’s no reason to assume that Bob reads Alices blog.

The results of the simulation (run on a population the same size as the UK) looked like this (dark red means more people see the content)

Why does the ratio of undirected connections to directed connections matter so much? Well imagine Alice sends a great new ad to Bob – Bob now decides to send it to all his friends – but Alice has already seen it, so she’s not going to send it to anyone else.

Clearly the same thing happens with what’s know as “connectedness” – i.e. if Alice is connected to Bob, and Bob is connected to Charlie, what is the chance that Charlie is connected to Alice?

… which brings us nicely back to the Viral Ad Network

- by spreading content to a large number of (otherwise unconnected) websites through the Viral Ad Network, advertisers can reach largely unconnected groups of people, who can (in turn) spread the content to their friends – with less chance of those friends overlapping – reducing the chance they have already seen the content, and giving great content a chance to spread further.

It’s a nice summary of what we’ve learned in the last ten or so years. Cheers – Andy

They’re only predictions, but these two chime nicely with VAN:

1. Consumers will play an even greater role as critics, commentators and content creators

5. Quality will be defined by instant, accessible, portable (less about polish, finish, and big production)

9. Creativity will matter more than ever (the opt in power of consumers will demand that when they do lean back even sales messages better be entertaining)

We massively advocate that the best ads are sharable and portable and entertaining. Good ads produce a viral effect – that’s the defining principle of the Viral Ad Network.

Consumers should also be able to comment, criticise and curate ads. Many brands and agencies will have a natural aversion to criticism. We understand this.

But every day we see more and more savvy brand managers and agencies encouraging comment and criticism. They know how to use it to engage with loyal customers and develop better products and services. That’s a clear win for consumers, and brands win when consumers win.

How to do this? In short: make great content, use social media platforms, and track what people think of ads. Who can do that? We can.

Opinions? Add your comments below…I love a good debate Or get in touch – we like to help and share.

Here at the Viral Ad Network, we’ve been trying to work out how we can get the biggest win for all our stakeholders. We’re extremely passionate about advertising and want to maximise the benefits for all involved:

• ~ We want our advertisers to get genuine engagement from a targeted, relevant audience;
• ~ We want this audience to enjoy the ads and choose to watch them;
• ~ We want our publishers to earn a fair price, and keep their sites’ popularity and appeal.

We think our cost-per-engagement (CPE) model is the most suitable method to reach the advertising parity that we strive for!

Our industry has been caught up a little in acronym tennis about the best expression for this model; we aren’t fussy about the exact term (we think CPE is ace!), as long as it means that people only pay when a user actively opts in and actually engages with the content.

CPE has obvious benefits to advertisers: they only pay for genuine interaction. People are becoming more and more used to online ads and cost per display advertising is subject to ‘Banner Blindness’ from many users. This makes a CPE ad spend more accountable as the advertiser won’t pay for people who aren’t interested in their message… But what are the benefits for everyone else?

The viewer gets a chance to decide if they want to engage with the content. Nothing is forced upon them, and as a result the ads have to be more entertaining and less of a hard sale.

As a publisher, your site’s viewers will get the choice whether they opt in to our ads. They can focus on the reason they are on your site: the content. With our ‘Fun Units’, we aim to add to the content of your site – to serve up fun and entertaining ads that will keep your site attractive to users so they will keep coming back. The virals we distribute are not a hard sell, so fit in with a wider range of sites, and aim to reward the viewer with fun and entertainment.

We also make our Fun Units show on-site games and videos; the video is played in-situ so when viewers engage with the content, they aren’t redirected away from your site. The fact that they are rewarding to your viewers also means you can approach the ad placement in your way… ‘video of the day’, ’sponsored fun’, whatever you think works best – as long as you say that it is an ad, we don’t mind!

Any questions, get in touch @ info(at)viraladnetwork(dot)net.

We love to hear what you think about the way we work!