IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/net/wpaper/1106.html

Virality, Network Effects and Advertising Effectiveness

Author

Abstract

Many video ads are designed to go viral, so that the total number of views they receive depends on customers sharing the ads with their friends. This paper explores the relationship between achieving this endogenous reach and the effectiveness of the ad at persuading a consumer to purchase or adopt a favorable attitude towards a product. The analysis combines data on the real-life virality of 400 video ads, and crowd-sourced measurement of advertising effectiveness among 24,000 consumers. We measure effectiveness by randomly exposing half of these consumers to a video ad and half to a similar placebo video ad, and then surveying their attitudes towards the focal product. Relative ad persuasiveness drops on average by 10\% for every one million views the ad had received. Taking into account the advantages of increased reach, this means that there was a decline in overall advertising effectiveness at 3-4 million views. Importantly, ads that generated both views \emph{and} online engagement in the form of comments did not suffer from the same negative relationship. We show that such ads retained their efficacy because they achieved virality due to humor or visual appeal rather than because they were provocative or outrageous.

Suggested Citation

  • Catherine Tucker, 2011. "Virality, Network Effects and Advertising Effectiveness," Working Papers 11-06, NET Institute.
    • Handle: RePEc:net:wpaper:1106
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.netinst.org/Tucker_11_06.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Anindya Ghose & Sang Pil Han, 2011. "An Empirical Analysis of User Content Generation and Usage Behavior on the Mobile Internet," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 57(9), pages 1671-1691, September.
    2. Avi Goldfarb & Catherine Tucker, 2011. "Online Display Advertising: Targeting and Obtrusiveness," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 30(3), pages 389-404, 05-06.
    3. Avi Goldfarb & Catherine E. Tucker, 2011. "Privacy Regulation and Online Advertising," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 57(1), pages 57-71, January.
    4. Hauser, John R & Wernerfelt, Birger, 1990. "An Evaluation Cost Model of Consideration Sets," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 16(4), pages 393-408, March.
    5. Sinan Aral & Dylan Walker, 2011. "Creating Social Contagion Through Viral Product Design: A Randomized Trial of Peer Influence in Networks," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 57(9), pages 1623-1639, February.
    6. Ai, Chunrong & Norton, Edward C., 2003. "Interaction terms in logit and probit models," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 80(1), pages 123-129, July.
    7. Doraszelski, Ulrich & Draganska, Michaela & Clark, C. Robert, 2007. "Information or Persuasion? An Empirical Investigation of the Effect of Advertising on Brand Awareness and Perceived Quality using Panel Data," Research Papers 1971, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    8. Marianne Bertrand & Esther Duflo & Sendhil Mullainathan, 2004. "How Much Should We Trust Differences-In-Differences Estimates?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(1), pages 249-275.
    9. Morwitz, Vicki G. & Steckel, Joel H. & Gupta, Alok, 2007. "When do purchase intentions predict sales?," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 23(3), pages 347-364.
    10. C. Clark & Ulrich Doraszelski & Michaela Draganska, 2009. "The effect of advertising on brand awareness and perceived quality: An empirical investigation using panel data," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 7(2), pages 207-236, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Wasim Ahmed & Alex Fenton & Mariann Hardey & Ronnie Das, 2022. "Binge Watching and the Role of Social Media Virality towards promoting Netflix’s Squid Game," IIM Kozhikode Society & Management Review, , vol. 11(2), pages 222-234, July.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Catherine E. Tucker, 2015. "The Reach and Persuasiveness of Viral Video Ads," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 34(2), pages 281-296, March.
    2. Hsing Kenneth Cheng & D. Daniel Sokol & Xinyu Zang, 2024. "The rise of empirical online platform research in the new millennium," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(2), pages 416-451, March.
    3. Catherine Tucker, 2010. "Social Networks, Personalized Advertising, and Privacy Controls," Working Papers 10-07, NET Institute.
    4. Avi Goldfarb & Catherine Tucker, 2011. "Online Display Advertising: Targeting and Obtrusiveness," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 30(3), pages 389-404, 05-06.
    5. Chen Liang & Zhan (Michael) Shi & T. S. Raghu, 2019. "The Spillover of Spotlight: Platform Recommendation in the Mobile App Market," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 30(4), pages 1296-1318, December.
    6. Abel Brodeur, 2012. "Smoking, Income and Subjective Well-Being: Evidence from Smoking Bans," Working Papers halshs-00664269, HAL.
    7. Shun-Yang Lee & Julian Runge & Daniel Yoo & Yakov Bart & Anett Gyurak & J. W. Schneider, 2023. "COVID-19 Demand Shocks Revisited: Did Advertising Technology Help Mitigate Adverse Consequences for Small and Midsize Businesses?," Papers 2307.09035, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2024.
    8. Andrés Elberg & Pedro M. Gardete & Rosario Macera & Carlos Noton, 2019. "Dynamic effects of price promotions: field evidence, consumer search, and supply-side implications," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 17(1), pages 1-58, March.
    9. Irina Heimbach & Oliver Hinz, 2018. "The Impact of Sharing Mechanism Design on Content Sharing in Online Social Networks," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 29(3), pages 592-611, September.
    10. Sylvia E Twersky, 2019. "Restrictive state laws aimed at immigrants: Effects on enrollment in the food stamp program by U.S. citizen children in immigrant families," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(5), pages 1-18, May.
    11. Youngmin BAEK & Kazunobu HAYAKAWA & Kenmei TSUBOTA & Shujiro URATA & Kenta YAMANOUCHI, 2019. "Tariff Pass-through in Wholesaling: Evidence from Firm-level Data in Japan," Discussion papers 19064, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    12. Randall Lewis & Dan Nguyen, 2015. "Display advertising’s competitive spillovers to consumer search," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 13(2), pages 93-115, June.
    13. Khim-Yong Goh & Cheng-Suang Heng & Zhijie Lin, 2013. "Social Media Brand Community and Consumer Behavior: Quantifying the Relative Impact of User- and Marketer-Generated Content," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 24(1), pages 88-107, March.
    14. Wei Zhou & Mingfeng Lin & Mo Xiao & Lu Fang, 2025. "Higher Precision Is Not Always Better: Search Algorithm and Consumer Engagement," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 71(7), pages 6204-6226, July.
    15. Jingbo Hou & Chen Liang & Pei-Yu Chen & Bin Gu, 2024. "Can Telework Adjustment Help Reduce Disaster-Induced Gender Inequality in Job Market Outcomes?," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 35(4), pages 1701-1720, December.
    16. Schertler, Andrea, 2016. "Pricing effects when competitors arrive: The case of discount certificates in Germany," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 84-99.
    17. Avi Goldfarb, 2014. "What is Different About Online Advertising?," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 44(2), pages 115-129, March.
    18. Djordjevic, Ljubica, 2015. "Essays in household finance," Other publications TiSEM ad3edc86-915e-4ce8-ba38-b, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    19. Matt Marx & Deborah Strumsky & Lee Fleming, 2009. "Mobility, Skills, and the Michigan Non-Compete Experiment," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 55(6), pages 875-889, June.
    20. Thomas C. Buchmueller & John DiNardo & Robert G. Valletta, 2011. "The Effect of an Employer Health Insurance Mandate on Health Insurance Coverage and the Demand for Labor: Evidence from Hawaii," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 3(4), pages 25-51, November.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • M37 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Marketing and Advertising - - - Advertising
    • M38 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Marketing and Advertising - - - Government Policy and Regulation

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:net:wpaper:1106. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Nicholas Economides (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.NETinst.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.