Unruly Media has put out its annual look at the top 20 video ads of the year, in terms of shares. While, it may not come across as an ad, exactly, the company has put Kony 2012 from the non-profit Invisible Children, at the top of the list.
The video has generated over 10.1 million shares since launching in early March.
“Emotive content and bottom-up sharing stole the show this year,” said Unruly co-founder and COO Sarah Wood. “The world’s biggest brands can learn from Invisible Children: it’s not about a 30-second commercial anymore when a 30-minute video gets 10 million global shares.”
The data is comes from Unruly’s Viral Video Chart, which measures shares (rather than views) across Twitter, Facebook and blogs.
Unruly Media put out a new report looking at the impact of social video recommendations on traditional brand metrics such as brand recall, brand favorability, purchase intent and brand association.
Keep in mind that this is the firm behind such viral hits as Evian Roller Babies and Old Spice: The Man Your Man Could Smell Like (not to mention the campaign that got Chrome’s PageRank penalized):
“Notably, it was found that viewers are far more likely to recall a brand name and engage with an ad’s message if a branded video has been recommended to them by a peer,” an Unruly spokesperson tells WebProNews.
The firm points out the following highlights from the research:
Brand recall and brand association rose 7 percent among viewers who had been recommended the videos versus viewers who found it by browsing;
73 percent of respondents who viewed a peer-recommended video recalled the brand when prompted versus 68 percent of viewers who had browsed to the video directly;
There was a 14 percent increase in the number of people who enjoyed the video following a recommendation versus those who had discovered it by browsing;
People who enjoyed a video were 97 percent more likely to purchase the product featured in the video
Here’s a closer look at the enjoyment comparison between recommended vs. non-recommended videos:
As Unruly notes in its report, the enjoyment level is important because it has a direct impact on key brand metrics:
Early this month, Google was caught up in some controversy related to paid linking. It’s funny how the Internet works. That seems like such a long time ago, and so many Google controversies ago. Since then, Google has sparked heated debate among users and the media around both Search Plus Your World and its new privacy policies.
But anyway, some search results were showing up, leading to sponsored blog posts from bloggers talking about the benefits of Chrome. At least one was found to have what appeared to be a paid link, leading to sharp criticism that Google was not playing by its own rules.
Google ended up putting out the following statement (via Danny Sullivan):
We’ve investigated and are taking manual action to demote www.google.com/chrome and lower the site’s PageRank for a period of at least 60 days. We strive to enforce Google’s webmaster guidelines consistently in order to provide better search results for users. While Google did not authorize this campaign, and we can find no remaining violations of our webmaster guidelines, we believe Google should be held to a higher standard, so we have taken stricter action than we would against a typical site.
Google was trying to buy video ads about Chrome, and these sponsored posts were an inadvertent result of that. If you investigated the two dozen or so sponsored posts (as the webspam team immediately did), the posts typically showed a Google Chrome video but didn’t actually link to Google Chrome. We double-checked, and the video players weren’t flowing PageRank to Google either.
However, we did find one sponsored post that linked to www.google.com/chrome in a way that flowed PageRank. Even though the intent of the campaign was to get people to watch videos–not link to Google–and even though we only found a single sponsored post that actually linked to Google’s Chrome page and passed PageRank, that’s still a violation of our quality guidelines…
Unruly Media was the company behind the campaign. They’re also known for successful viral campaigns like the Evian Roller Babies and the Old Spice “Man Your Man Could Smell Like”.
One Googler said the whole thing illustrated “why you should pay attention to what any marketing, advertising, or SEO companies might be doing on your behalf.”
Danny Sullivan is sharing an email that Unruly has emailed to partners to avoid another fiasco. The email points to guidelines and terms of service. Within that email, the firm says:
First, let’s talk about links. Unruly’s video player typically links to the advertiser’s site, YouTube channel or Facebook page. It does this in a totally safe way (using nofollow, redirects, and JavaScript embedding) that does not transfer PageRank from your site to the advertiser’s site.
This is really important. Be very, very careful if you add any of your own links. If you want to link to the advertiser’s site in an article, post, or tweet, only use the redirect links that we provide you that are also safe. If you don’t do this, you may be in breach of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines (Google guidelines). If you’re not sure, just don’t link. The video player links so you don’t have to!
Second, let’s talk about disclosure. Unruly’s video player always has a disclosure underneath it making it totally clear that the video is sponsored. This is fine if you just embed the video in a column or area reserved for commercial content. However, if you embed the video in a blog post, you should always put the phrase ‘Sponsored Video’ as the first two words of the title of your post. If you link to a page containing the video in a tweet or status update, you should mark it #ad. It doesn’t matter that you’re not being paid to tweet or post the video – Because you stand to benefit commercially every time someone watches the video on your site or app, you need to make sure you disclose this clearly.
Unruly is the marketing firm behind Google’s Chrome paid link fiasco – the campaign by which Googlers are saying they are embarrassed.
Still, Unruly announced today that it is has just raised $25 million in funding in a Series A investment from Amadeus Capital Partners, Van den Ende & Deitmers and The British Growth Fund.
Unruly says it’s the largest ever for a private company in the social video sector.
The company was founded in 2006. It has offices in San Francisco, London, Berlin, Paris, Stockholm, Amsterdam and Sydney. It claims to have delivered, tracked and audited 1.34 billion user-intended video views and executed 1,400+ successful social video campaigns for brands like Evian (Roller Babies), T-Mobile (Life’s for sharing) and Old Spice (Man Your Man Could Smell Like).
They’ve also done campaigns for EA, Adidas, Unilever, and of course Google.
“Today represents an important milestone for the company and social video as a whole,” said Unruly founder and CEO Scott Button. “Five years ago, we set out to help brands capture the massive opportunity in social video and we’re delighted that such a distinguished group of investors share our conviction.”
Button’s response to the whole Google ordeal, was (via Peter Kafka):
…we don’t ask bloggers to link to the advertiser’s site. It’s just not part of our business model. We help advertisers distribute video content and that’s what we get paid for. All links from the video player itself are wrapped in Javascript, so although Google can follow them, they don’t influence search engine rankings. Even though we don’t ask bloggers to link, we do advise them to use nofollow if they do link to the advertiser’s site. This is really important and they should do it to protect themselves as much as the advertiser.
As far as I’m aware, there was one link in one post that was not marked nofollow. This was corrected as soon as we became aware of it.
We’re always completely upfront and transparent with bloggers that we are running commercial campaigns and who we’re working for. We always require that bloggers disclose any commercial incentive to post video content. We always require that bloggers disclose even on related tweets that they might do off their own bats.
It’s also a key part of how we operate that we don’t tell bloggers what or how to write. It’s really important that opinions expressed and the tone of voice belong to the author not the advertiser. Occasionally that leads to human error, as here, so we’re always really happy to have these kinds of example flagged and will sort them out as quickly as we possibly can.
This is embarrassing, but a good illustration of two things:
1. Why I like working at Google. The Search Quality Team tries to apply the Webmaster Guidelines fairly – even on other Google products.
2. Why you should pay attention to what any marketing, advertising, or SEO companies might be doing on your behalf.
Either way, I’m sure some of Unruly’s campaigns, such as Old Spice and Evian will be remembered long after the Google ordeal is forgotten.
“Unruly’s proprietary technology platform and aggressive global growth strategy in a fast-growing market is really impressive,” said Richard Anton, Partner at Amadeus Capital Partners. “We are delighted to be supporting the company build on its success, bringing our experience of building a number of international marketing and advertising technology companies, including Celltick, ComQi and EPiServer.”
“With global online ad spend set to reach $110 billion by 2014 and online video ad spend predicted to be the fastest growing category, we believe Unruly is strongly positioned to be the winner in the global social video market,” said Martijn Hamann, Partner of Van den Ende & Deitmers.
“In a short space of time, Unruly has played a major role in the explosive growth of social video and this investment gives it additional firepower,” said Marion Bernard, Regional Director of BGF. “We look forward to working with the company and our co-investors to take advantage of the very significant global expansion opportunities. BGF is working in partnership with other investors to expand the pool of investment capital to growing and ambitious UK companies as a key part of developing the entrepreneurial economy”
Torch Partners and Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP advised on the funding.
