Viral Ad Network

Coming Soon: This week the Viral Brand Chart is still buzzing with anticipation for the Superbowl. I’m not quite sure when it became normal to release a teaser trailer to an advert but last week we saw Volkswagen’s ad preview The Bark Side storm in to the top of the chart, now this cryptic clip (rumored to have been released by Honda) has popped up online – apparently we have to wait until Sunday for the big reveal.

Spectacular Man Made Sun Brightens up London 2 Hours Early: Here’s a cool little PR stunt that we’ve been seeding this week. Nobody likes dark winter mornings so Tropicana decided to bring a little extra sunshine to the streets of London by hoisting a giant artificial sun above Trafalgar Square, complete with deck chairs and glasses of orange juice for passers by to stop and enjoy a bit of a sunny boost on their way to work – smiles all around!

Megaupload mega song: Top of the UGC chart this week is the controversial file sharing promotional video from Kim DotCom. The clip, which features several big music industry names including Snoop Dogg and P Diddy, was already trending on Twitter following the shutdown of the Megaupload site earlier this month but was promptly removed from YouTube following a complaint from Universal Music, (despite the fact that the company does not control any rights to the video).

The song itself is a rather dull marketing clip but interestingly it’s been thrust into the media limelight as the latest example of the potential impact of the new anti-piracy movement. It has since been returned to YouTube after a successful lawsuit from Megaupload, but the owners are now facing indictment for copyright infringement and facilitating the wide scale illegal downloading and sharing of movies, music and other material online. The courtroom drama is set to continue for quite some time but the outcome is likely to be a sign of what we can expect of things to come, so watch this space!

Snoring dormouse with sound: On a lighter note, here’s our weekly dose of cuteness and my absolute favorite clip this week, one super sleepy little dormouse.

Lego man in space: Two Canadian teenagers make this brave little dude the first Lego man in space!

Using a helium filled weather balloon, two tiny cameras, a GPS tracking system and a homemade parachute, the pair managed to launch the plastic figure 16 miles into space (that’s three times the height of a commercial aircraft), capturing some beautiful shots of the curvature of the earth against the stunning blue of the stratosphere, before it parachuted back down to earth landing 75 miles away.

Radar: Crazy French prankster Remi Gaillard is back with the latest clip in the Dangerously Funny Videos series, this time he’s dressed up as a giant speed camera, flashing all kinds of traffic from tractors to trains. All appears to be going well until the police show up!

2011 – One Backflip A Day: This guys dad bet him $100 that he couldn’t do a backflip every day of 2011, so guess what he did…

One happy dog: Finally, rounding up the UGC chart with just a little bit more cuteness – most excited dog ever!!!

You can catch up on the full viral listings on the NMA viral Brand chart and UGC chart, powered by the Viral Ad Network.

The Media Blog has a really good article on the Daily Mail’s online presence.

According to The Guardian, the UK based Daily Mail has overtaken the New York Times to the most viewed online newspaper position.

The Media Blog explains that this has largely been achieved by the Mail Online focusing on scantily-clad celebrities, female figures in Bikinis, and other titillating content. This makes it’s readership quite different from the “white, middle-aged, middle class of middle England who worry about a news agenda of wheelie bins, cancer, hoodies, liberals and multiculturalism” that the Daily Mail’s print version caters to (as the Media Blog describes the audience).

But how much of a good example does this set for publishers?

Yes, the Mail has increased it’s readership very significantly – but the question is what has that done to their bottom line?

Very few brands would choose to advertise next to this kind of risqué content – meaning less competition, and lower prices. For those who are advertising, user engagement rate is likely to be lower – leading to lower click through rates.

A quick search for “Mail Online Revenue” brought the results I was expecting. Paid Content reported in July that the revenue per user had almost halved over two years – despite readership having increased by 82% in a single year.

After the overheads for serving content to this many viewers is included, it would be interesting to see how much of this reduced revenue they managed to turn to profit. Finding that out by itself would be difficult.

The Mail Online’s parent group (Associated Newspaper’s) reported a loss of $1,407,127.19 on digital operations in the year ending October 2011, which their CEO put down to struggling to sell ad space in the US, as well as capital spent on growth of operations.

The Mail’s $1.4M loss is compared to the NYTimes’ performance in Q3 alone, who posted digital revenue of $50.3M, and total net income of $15.7M across the company ($20M up from the year before) – despite declining revenue from print.

Perhaps the Mail Online isn’t setting such a great example to other publishers after all…