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Going viral on YouTube

Author

Listed:
  • Leonhardt, James M.

Abstract

Consumers are increasingly watching online video and advertisers are increasingly using video-sharing sites such as YouTube to promote their video advertisements. Although not typically the case, some of these advertisements go viral, quickly reaching millions of consumers. To better understand the antecedents of such virality, this paper recounts recent advertisements on YouTube that attained viral status. From these cases, several commonalities are observed, such that each ad evoked strong emotion, told a story and quickly reached 1 million views. Based on these observations, when promoting brand content on YouTube, managers are urged to focus on promoting highly emotive content, to incorporate the brand within a story, and to continually produce and promote novel brand content. Building on the present work, there are also opportunities for future research to consider how specific ad characteristics such as storytelling and schadenfreude might affect the probability of virality.

Suggested Citation

  • Leonhardt, James M., 2015. "Going viral on YouTube," Journal of Digital & Social Media Marketing, Henry Stewart Publications, vol. 3(1), pages 21-30, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:aza:jdsmm0:y:2015:v:3:i:1:p:21-30
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    Cited by:

    1. Salomé Berrocal-Gonzalo & Patricia Zamora-Martínez & Ana González-Neira, 2023. "Politainment on Twitter: Engagement in the Spanish Legislative Elections of April 2019," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 11(2), pages 163-175.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    social media; advertisements; virality; YouTube; emotion; storytelling;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • M3 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Marketing and Advertising

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