Viral Dissemination of Content in Advertising: Emotional Factors to Reach Consumers

Abstract

Social media has become a relevant content dissemination channel in recent years. Each user has the capacity to potentially reach others, and in this way, social media challenges the traditional distribution of content through mass media. The advertising industry has had to adapt to this new ecosystem and develop audiovisual pieces specifically tailored to this environment as part of their communication strategies. These pieces aim at achieving not only views but to engage viewers in sharing content with their contacts. Recent research indicates that there are certain aspects of human behaviour related to emotions and motivations that have an impact on the decision to share information, news and content with others. However, there are few studies analysing how the features of the content shared influence that decision. This article presents the content analysis results of the 100 most widely shared advertising viral videos around the world from 2011 to 2015 according to Adweek. The analysis was conducted from an emotional perspective in order to establish the common features of the most shared videos and to identify the frequency in which emotional narrative resources are used.

A Multimodal Emotion Perspective on Social Media Influencer Marketing: The Effectiveness of Influencer Emotions, Network Size, and Branding on Consumer Brand Engagement Using Facial Expression and Linguistic Analysis

“…Use of facial emotion positively affects likes, comments, and views of SMI posts, supporting the notion that emotional message content is a catalyst for greater consumer engagement that attracts viewers (Dafonte-Gómez et al 2020;Lee, Hosanagar, and Nair 2018;Tellis et al 2019). Further, emotion in post captions did not significantly sway engagement, in line with previous research indicating that the inclusion of textual captions in a post does not significantly alter viewers' evaluations of the content (McComb, Gobin, and Mills 2021) and that textual content can be emotionally ambiguous on its own (Liu et al 2018;Prada et al 2018).…”

“…Within social networking sites (SNSs), visual and textual self-presentation are both on display, and they dynamically influence attention, social judgment, and relationship formation and management (Bradley 2009; Nanne, Antheunis, and Van Noort 2021; Vuilleumier 2005; Wang et al 2010). General emotional message content generates higher levels of consumer engagement (Lee, Hosanagar, and Nair 2018; Tellis et al 2019) and can affect approach or avoidance inclinations, particularly trust, in viewers (Britt et al 2020; Dafonte-Gómez et al 2020; Palmer and Simmons 1995). Specifically, the multimodal delivery of visual and textual brand messaging in SNSs has been found to preferentially appeal to consumer emotions and social media engagement (Horphet and Srijongjai 2020).…”

The projection of Chinese University online image and social media engagement based on Bayesian model

“…Research on the dissemination of university admissions information found that messages containing emotions increased social media users’ liking and retweeting behavior, but did not affect the number of comments [ 43 ]. Recent research has shown that messages containing emotional content on social media platforms are more likely to go viral, have a greater reach [ 44 ], and contribute to a stronger connection between social media users and the brand [ 39 , 45 ]. At the same time, the destination image projected by universities is not only a display and introduction of destination attributes but also a way to evoke an emotional experience and create a positive destination image [ 46 ].…”

What, how and when? Exploring the influence of firm-generated content on popularity in a tourism destination context

“…On the one hand, according to past research on viral advertising, ads including emotional content about a brand (that is, content evoking strong affects or emotions such as surprise or joy) contribute to achieving a closer connection between the individual and the brand in comparison to those ads focused on rational messages (Micu & Plummer, 2010). In this respect, there is strong evidence for the higher influence of affective content on ad virality (Dafonte-Gómez et al, 2020). On the other hand, some previous studies have examined the communicability of social information (that is, information helping to build the society's beliefs) (Lyons & Kashima, 2003).…”