Viral Marketing Goes High Tech

Viral marketing has become very popular in recent years.  So it was only a matter of time before some marketing genius decided to take it digital.  It made me wonder if the latest and greatest in interactive technology is attracting consumers and, if so, is there positive ROI.
According to a survey conducted by Feed Company, advertiser interest in viral video is increasing and 70% of ad-agency and media-buying executives plan to increase budgets for viral video marketing in 2009.  72% of media buyers say their clients are interested in using viral video as a central part of their marketing campaigns.  Also, a majority of advertising executives reported being pleased with the results of viral video campaigns.
This doesn’t surprise me at all.  What is surprising about the increase in viral video use is that respondents said metrics for viral video success remain unpredictable and subjective.  More than half of those respondents said that tracking and reporting needs improvement and 21% said it needs “a lot of improvement.”  When asked how many times a video needed to be viewed in order to be considered successful, an equal percentage of respondents selected 100,000, 250,000 and 500,000.  So it is obvious that there are very few hard and fast rules for viral video marketing as far as advertising professionals are concerned. 
I confess that when I read this article, I immediately questioned why media buyers would be more than willing to increase spending on a concept that they can’t concisely manage or even measure if it is effective at all.  It almost seems like marketers are willingly to try anything even if it may likely fail.  And then it hit me: someone has to try these theories so that it can be determined that it either won’t work at all or so that a formula can be recognized if it does work.
The article continues to say: “The survey shows that agencies recognize the value of viral video for their clients even as they call for improvements,” said Josh Warner, president of Feed Company. “We’re definitely seeing more of these campaigns because it costs less to produce and market viral video than many other types of traditional media – and that’s attractive to marketers during an economic downturn.”
Since this kind of campaign is less expensive to execute it easily lends itself to experimentation.  And that’s a good thing since it’s getting more difficult to reach the Millennials.  The Millennials already have an affinity for video so I thought it would be interesting to check out some numbers on another tried-and-true method that has gone to video. A study from iPerceptions, Inc. shows that the under 25 set are more likely to click online video ads of the 11% who are willing to click video ads at all.  According to the study, people are still most likely to click on text links.  Display ads are second most popular, with right banners significantly beating out top banners.
In the face of all of these figures it seems as though marketers are thinking way ahead of where consumers are comfortable going.  Since they are the ones that are attracted to it in the first place, I think as the population ages and that under 25 bracket has more disposable income, all of the newer ways to take advantage of what are essentially old tricks will become more significant.   It should be quite interesting to see where the internet takes us both as consumers and marketers.  But it seems, for now, high-tech may not be as important as we want it to be.