Beyond Virality: A Study of Indonesia's Viral Video Ads

Abstract. Customers' and companies' strong interest in dynamic advertisements makes brands focus on creating video advertisements that will be viewed and shared by many consumers. However, being “viral” is not the complete picture of a brand's objective. Brands need to find a more valuable virality that focuses not only on the number of shares but also on brand evaluation and sales. Using collections of Indonesia's most popular ads from YouTube Indonesia, the study aims to understand how emotional combinations in ads can affect valuable virality. Results indicate two emotional combinations in the ads, one that focuses strongly on the emotions of joy and surprise (positive ads) and another with the more complex and contrasting emotions of sadness and joy (mixed ads). An experiment showing different types of ads to two groups of a single population further demonstrates how different types of ads can create different effects on valuable virality. Mixed ads outperform positive ads in brand-related outcomes. No difference is found between the effects of positive and mixed ads on sharing intention. The findings shed light on Indonesia's viral ads and how companies can create emotional combinations in video ads to maximize their objectives. Keywords: Viral marketing, advertising, online content, social transmission, video sharing