Visible Measures Blog

The wildly popular video game franchise, Guitar Hero, certainly seems to have struck a chord -- pun fully intended -- with its latest advertising campaign. In the ads, it slots different Guitar Hero guitar-toting celebrities into the famous “Old Time Rock and Roll” scene from the 80’s teen classic, “Risky Business.”

To play the role of Tom Cruise, game maker Activision wisely strummed its way into the heart of pop culture by tapping American Idol stars David Cook and David Archuleta, sports stars Alex Rodriguez, Kobe Bryant, Michael Phelps and Tony Hawk, and last but not at all least, supermodel Heidi Klum. Given such a line up, we at Visible Measures couldn't resist dipping into our Viral Reach Database to do some classic viral video comparisons. While its still early in the campaign's lifecylce, the top-line results have so far been impressive: a total video view count of nearly 8 million across more than 300 distinct video placements.

To begin, we divided the videos by star category, comparing Idols vs. Athletes vs. Supermodel, and looked at relative performance in our own viral video battle of the bands. To be clear, these groupings closely matched the ads themselves, one per David, one for the Athletes and two for the Supermodel (more about that later). This is where things got interesting.

Despite the not-so-long ago completion of American Idol, which has propelled the popularity of the Davids, the historic Olympic performance by Michael Phelps, and the ever-present popularity of the other sports stars, Heidi Klum's jam routine routed the other contestants by a margin of roughly 400,000 views. In total, the supermodel’s videos drove more than 3.1 million video views and 95 video placements.

As for how she pulled this off, we mentioned that Heidi had two videos. One is the made-for-TV version. The other is the Director's cut, in which Heidi stays true to her Victoria’s Secret roots.

The two videos are below. See if you can note the difference.

While the election is officially over, the fun lives on in the realm of viral video. President-elect Barack Obama’s speech has been making the rounds throughout the viral video world at lightning speed. And, as has been covered in TechCrunch, the Wall Street Journal’s AllThingsD, NewTeeVee, and TV Week, we’ve been closely monitoring the viral video growth of this historic speech and have uncovered some big numbers describing the rate of growth of the speech's video placements and overall audience.

First, in honor of possibly our last opportunity to compare an Obama speech directly to a Senator John McCain speech, we tapped our Viral Reach Database to look at the total number of placements – every video related to their speeches – and viral video views for McCain’s gracious concession speech versus Obama’s victory speech.

The results of this comparison are not all that surprising – after all, we American's love a winner.

Obama’s speech has seen more than 7 million views spawning from 500 placements in less than 48 hours, whereas McCain’s speech collected over 1 million views from more than 180 placements.

This is still an impressive result for McCain, as his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention has so far collected just over 750,000 views from 90 placements (while's Palin’s RNC speech drew 2.6 million views).

The viral video view growth of Obama’s victory speech has been gathering momentum since yesterday morning. Our discovery process revealed that the speech had seen more than 620,000 views from 100 placements by 11:00 am ET yesterday. By 5:30 pm, the view count had shot up to more than 2.2 million from 160 different placements.  At the 11:30PM ET, almost exactly 24 hours after the speech occurred, the number of placements had grown to 200, generating close to 5 million views.

When we looked again this morning at 9:30 am, the view count had ballooned to more than 6.8 million while the placements had skyrocketed to more than 500. It's been fascinating to monitor this viral video phemenon develop in real-time. At this stages in the speech's viral video lifecycle, the question is not if these numbers will continue to rise, but how high will they go?

We’ve thoroughly enjoyed reporting on the election over the past couple months. From the conventions, to the debates, to the hilarious skits on Saturday Night Live, the election has provided a wealth of viral video topics to analyze. And while we're partly sad to see the election come to a close -- ok, not really! -- it seems apparent that the medium of viral video has benefited greatly from this election. For that, we give thanks.

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The data used in this post was collected from Visible Measure's Viral Reach Database, a constantly growing video repository of analytic data on 100+ million Internet videos from 150+ video-sharing destinations.  

We’re excited to report that the blog world has been abuzz with our recent research findings about Apple blunting the effect of Microsoft’s $300 million “I’m a PC” campaign in viral video. While the ultimate effectiveness of Apple’s response is still up in the air, the highlights of the coverage below should help put things into perspective. Check it out:

• Apple Insider: More worrying for Microsoft might be Apple's response ads, which tweak the software developer for allegedly spending more money on marketing its brand than fixing problems commonly associated with Windows Vista. The three Apple segments' first week of collective views generated a modest 70 percent of the viral views managed by the "I'm a PC" ad, but were also placed on twice as many websites overall -- 140 versus 70 -- and promised greater exposure than Microsoft's promos.


• AdAge: Incidentally, according to Visible Measures, which aggregates data on online viral videos, the first seven days of the new Apple ads notched 70% of the reach the PC ads snared in their first seven days. But Apple had double the number of unique placements -- sites that posted the video -- than Microsoft had, perhaps indicating Apple ads have more viral potential.


• Computer World: Even more impressive was the broader viral spread of Apple's ads: They generated twice as many "placements" -- distinct videos with their own URL -- on the Internet as did Microsoft's campaign. "From our perspective, they seem to be creating more buzz than the average Apple ad," Cutler said. "If you look at the comments [on the Web], feelings were very mixed about the Apple ads, with people wondering if they were negative attack ads or had gone too far." That kind of discussion, or the sheer potential for argument, is crucial if ads are to spread virally, Cutler added. "There's no guarantee of viral activity, but when an audience gets involved it can significantly increase the reach of a campaign," he said. "From an ROI perspective, this is very attractive."


• Ars Technica: Based on viral video views, the Microsoft ads were more popular, receiving over 1.5 million views in their first week. Apple was somewhat far behind in the view category, with its ads receiving about 70 percent of Microsoft's first week views. This is actually not too surprising, since the Get a Mac campaign (in general) is not new, and people weren't as eager to check out Apple's latest ads as they were when Microsoft launched its brand new campaign. Things look way better for Apple in terms of placements, however, since Apple's ads showed up in about twice as many places as the "I'm a PC" ads did. In general, it looks like both Microsoft's ads and Apple's snarky responses were fairly well received, but clearly Microsoft has got some work to do if it wants to unseat Apple's dominance in this type of advertising.


• Mac Blogz: Our friends at Visible Measures have put together some data regarding Apple’s ‘Get a Mac’ ads, and Microsoft’s recent $300 million ad campaign. Interestingly, Apple’s most recent ads (Bean Counter, V Word and Bake Sale), garnered twice as placements, not views as Microsoft’s ‘I’m a PC’ campaign. When comparing views, Microsoft’s ads received 1.7 million views in their first week, compared to Apple’s 1.2 million.


• Silicon Alley Insider: A Microsoft (MSFT) spokesperson told AdAge that 17,000 users have already submitted videos and that "I'm a PC" videos have been viewed on the site 1.5 million times. To join the crowd, visit Windows.com and upload a five second video in which you say "I'm PC and [insert witticism here]." Metrics firm Visible Measures says Apple's latest Mac vs. PC ads, which counter Microsoft's jab, appeared on double the number of sites as the "I'm a PC" ad.


• Mac Daily News: Cutler reports, "To see if Apple was able to blunt Microsoft’s attempt to reshape consumer perception of Windows, we tapped our Viral Reach Database to identify and measure the viral video placements from each campaign... These first-week results reveal that Apple’s viral video offensive made significant headway against Microsoft's message. Apple’s three new spots scored 70% of the viral video views that the much-discussed “I’m a PC” initially generated. And the view count totals are only part of the story, as these new Apple ads have inspired twice as many viral video placements."


• Contentinople: Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT)'s "I'm a PC" ads were more successful than Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL)'s three response ads, according to a comparison of the "viral"-ness of the videos online, according to Visible Measures. And Advertising Age reports that people have taken it upon themselves to contribute why they are PCs, inspiring a user-generated ad campaign.

What do you think about Apple’s response? Do the “Get a Mac” ads still have that magic something something? On the other hand, considering our findings, did Microsoft get its money’s worth? Should they resurrect the two stooges, Seinfeld and Gates?

The Microsoft/Apple advertising war rages on. It’s hard to say who fired the first shot, but what we do know is that Microsoft has directly responded to Apple’s wildly successful “Get a Mac” ads with the $300 million "I'm a PC" campaign (well, after a brief but intriguing attempt to team Microsoft founder Bill Gates with comic legend Jerry Seinfeld). The "I'm a PC" campaign hit in mid-September and it took Apple exactly a month to respond with three pointedly anti-Vista "Get a Mac" ads (included below).

“Bean Counter”

To see if Apple was able to blunt Microsoft’s attempt to reshape consumer perception of Windows, we tapped our Viral Reach Database to identify and measure the viral video placements from each campaign. And since Microsoft’s campaign has been in-market for over a month while the Apple ads were released in mid-October, we compared only the first seven days for each campaign.

These first-week results reveal that Apple’s viral video offensive made significant headway against Microsoft's message. Apple’s three new spots scored 70% of the viral video views that the much-discussed “I’m a PC” initially generated. And the view count totals are only part of the story, as these new Apple ads have inspired twice as many viral video placements (i.e. distinct videos with their own URL) as the Microsoft "I'm a PC" campaign.

While it's always tough to predict viral video performance, these numbers show that the legions of Apple fans have planted the seeds for future viral video growth.

Sarah Palin has been nothing short of a gift from viral video heaven for the folks behind Saturday Night Live. In just over a month, SNL has featured the Alaskan phenom on four memorably hilarious nights of presidential campaign “coverage,” propelling Tina Fey onto the comedic A-list. SNL has seen so much success that they’ve spilled over to Thursday nights.  And it all continues to pick up speed.

In terms of viral video, the SNL/Sarah Palin franchise is a goliath. So far, using our Viral Reach Database, we’ve identified 200+ different SNL/Palin videos that, in aggregate, have accumulated more than 56 million (!!) viral video views. Every skit appears to have become an instant classic, as millions of viral video viewers have watched the introductory Palin / Clinton Press Conference, the epic Couric Interview, the spot-on Palin / Biden Debate, the Real Palin, and the Palin Rap.

The two most recent skits – the Real Palin and the Palin Rap – graced by the presence of the vice presidential candidate herself, were met with what seemed like surreal anticipation.  And not without reason. SNL saw its highest ratings in 14 years.

While it’s too early to gauge the full viral video impact of Govenor Palin's performance on SNL this past Saturday, we watched as the incremental view counts for the Palin / Clinton press conference videos spiked noticeably a few days after the Real Palin clips appeared.

 

The average incremental viral video view count leading into the real Palin’s SNL debut was floating around 175,000  per day. While there wasn’t much activity on the day of the show (since it’s on around 11:30 pm), by the time Monday (day 2) rolled around, the incremental view count surged past 800,000 daily viral video views. Talk about a halo effect! We can't help but notice that this is  similar to the increased view counts we reported for the Wario Land: Shake It experience. Fun!

At this rate, SNL stands to be the #1 show not just on TV but on the viral video Web as well. So while Tina Fey may not want to play the tenacious hockey mom from the North for very much longer, we have to believe that the network and SNL producers are secretly hoping for a McCain / Palin miracle on election day. :-)

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The data used in this post was collected from Visible Measure's Viral Reach Database, a constantly growing video repository of analytic data on 100+ million Internet videos from 150+ video-sharing destinations.

We’re happy to report that customers of Internet video platforms Brightcove and thePlatform now have Visible Measures analytics available as a pre-integrated solution. These partnerships make it easier than ever for forward-thinking video publishers and advertisers to implement our Internet video measurement solutions. This means more organizations can understand not only the performance of their online video content, but also can optimize their user experience by incorporating audience engagement data into their content programming process.

These relationships are yet another sign that Internet video measurement is maturing beyond the 'experimental' stage. We're looking forward to working closely with Brightcove and thePlatform in the months ahead. If you're interested in partnering with Visible Measures, you can find more information in our Partners section.

For all of its personal attacks and policy discussion, the third and final presidential debate may well be remembered as the country’s introduction to Joe the Plumber, also known as Joe Wurzelbacher. In case you've been living in a complete media blackout, Joe is a contractor from Ohio who wants to buy his own plumbing company and asked some tough questions of Senator Barack Obama on the campaign trail. Joe also happens to be a registered Republican.

During the third and final presidential debate, John McCain repeatedly invoked Joe the Plumber as an American everyman in an effort to highlight how his opponent's tax policies would affect “regular” Americans. By the time it was all over, Joe had been mentioned more than 20 times throughout the debate.

The following day, McCain went so far as to declare Joe the Plumber the debate winner! And while this assertion may be difficult to verify among likely voters, we can use our Viral Reach Database to measure the viral video performance of both the debate itself and subsequent clips of Joe.

All told, we found more than 150 different debate video placements, which, in aggregate, received just under 3.7 million views. Given that each of these videos shows both candidates, and in the interest of simplicity, let's divide these views equally between the two candidates. So, score 1.85 million view for Obama, and another 1.85 million views for McCain.

We here at Visible Measures often say that the online video audience votes with its mouse, so we next investigated video clips related to Joe the Plumber. We identified more than 130 distinct placements that together collected almost 2.0 million views total, or 8% more than either McCain or Obama.

Remarkably enough -- and with one big viral video measurement assumption around dividing debate views equally between the two candidates! -- Joe the Plumber came out on top of the third presidential debate. Amazing. Somebody get this guy a campaign manager!

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The data used in this post was collected from our Viral Reach Database, a constantly growing video repository of analytic data on 100+ million Internet videos from 150+ video-sharing destinations.

If the 2004 election marked the birth of blogging power, 2008 has seen the dawn of viral video as a major component of the election. A number of Get Out the Vote organizations are aggressively using the medium to reach the youth demographic with edgy clips featuring reverse psychology, apocalyptic futures, sardonic BBQ talk, and starlets with muzzles -- as you can see for yourself below, we're not making this up!  

While working hard to get young people to vote isn’t a new effort, being able to see which campaigns have attracted the most attention is new. None of us will know the full impact of these outreach efforts until after election day, but we think it's interesting to investigate the viral video viewing trends associated with each of these public service announcements.

First up is Don’t Vote, a celebrity mash-up that starts with some unexpected sarcasm. At the clip's outset, many recognizable stars beg, plead, and berate us to not vote... though after almost 90 seconds, things change and those same stars work to make the case for everyone to vote after all. Heads ups: this particular video contains some NSFW language, so you might want to don your headphones before pressing play.

The second campaign, called Citizen’s Cry, is a slickly produced dystopian look at the future through the eyes of an elderly woman who ages in reverse, ultimately transforming into an young voter today. The woman laments the fact that she and others neglected to vote inthe 2008 election, resulting in a very bleak future. It’s sort of like The Terminator, but without the rise of machines... or perhaps Memento, minus the memory loss. 

Next up is The Muzzler, starring Hollywood babes-of-the-moment Jessica Alba and Hayden Panettiere enthusiastically throwing down some Hannibal Lector analogies. This one is an, er, unusual combination of over-the-top Home Shopping Network earnestness and mocking irony.

Our fourth and final campaign is a set of Get Out the Video videos sponsored by the Gap.  The campaign is predicated on voting for something, anything, they really don’t care... just as long as you vote. For example, Bill Maher cuttingly tells us to vote for barbeque while Kristen Bell says to vote for pigs and cows.

Seems like the consensus among these clips is that apathetic young voters can best be reached via irony. Interesing. Well, how did these ideas play with the viral video voting public? 

“Don’t Vote” grabbed the top spot, bringing in 4 million views across 70 different clips.“Citizen’s Cry” has reached 2.5 million views from just a few clips, while “The Muzzler,”despite its stars' well-publicized hotness, cooled off to around 400,000 views from over a dozen clips. And theGap videos, which somehow manages to be simulataneously definitive andabsurdist, have collectively attracted just over 50,000 viral video views across 15 or so clips.

Overall, it looks like the star-power of "Don't Vote" has attracted the most audience interest, not only racking up over 6,500 comments but also inspiring a number of community-driven spoofs and video responses. Talk about the importance of activating your base!

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The data used in this post was collected from our Viral Reach Database, a constantly growing video repository of analytic data on 100+ million Internet videos from 150+ video-sharing destinations.   

We here at Visible Measures watch many viral videos each day -- some might argue that this is a job perk, but I digress. Of course, these viral videos are typically contained in a video player on a Web page, either at a video sharing site or embedded into a blog post.

But what if that video could spill out of the player and onto the page around it? Well, it looks like the marketing minds behind the Nintendo Wii's upcoming Wario Land title asked the very same question... and went ahead and launched their Wario Land: Shake It! viral video ad that quite literally breaks new ground. Below is a video capture of the entire experience, but you really need to go to the page for the full effect. 

As you can see, the “Wario Land: Shake It” trailer plays just as any Internet video would, but, as Wario busts up everything in sight, things start flying out of the video and onto the rest of the page. As the cartoonish carnage continues, the YouTube page begins to fall apart. Comments are thrown around, menu bars crash into related videos, and viral video chaos ensues.

So how has this campaign performed? To date, the view count has shot up over 3 million views. We then dug into our Viral Reach Database and uncovered more than 150 other video placements related to  the campaign that have collectively accumulated almost 1.5 million additional views.

However, the delta between one admittedly special viral video and 150 of its "regular" companions goes beyond total views. The viral Shake It experience appears to have generated increased awareness of, and hence interest in, the Wario Land: Shake It! game itself.

Before the “Shake It” experience began tearing apart its YouTube page, Wario-related viral videos averaged about 5,000 views per day. However, after the viral ad began to take off, viewership of the normal Wario clips surged almost 500% to over 25,000 views per day. Mission accomplished!

So far, this surge in interest has been largely confined to related clips within the YouTube environment, even though Wario-related content has also proven popular on GameTrailers.com, a major site for video game enthusiasts. With that said, it's still early in the Wario Land: Shake It! viral video campaign and we'll be watching to see if the halo effect extends to the broader network of video sharing sites.

What do you think will happen? Do you believe that this is an interesting flash-in-the-pan, or will we all look back on it as a ground-breaking campaign that forever changed the face of viral marketing?

And, as always, we'd love to hear about any particularly interesting viral video campaigns -- that remain inside the video player, explode across the page, or do something else entirely. We take requests!

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The data used in this post was collected from our Viral Reach Database, a constantly growing video repository of analytic data on 100+ million Internet videos from 150+ video-sharing destinations.  

We're happy to report that there’s been quite a bit of online chatter centered around our recent discovery that Microsoft's Seinfeld / Gates commercials surpassed their “I’m a PC” counterpart ads by more than 4.3 million viral video views. And at a fraction of the price! But why is this the case? Theories abound, both in from blog posts and the numerous comments each has attracted.   

• Abbey Klasson of Advertising Age reports: BrandIndex, which measures online buzz, said the Gates/Seinfeld campaign was successful in generating buzz and that Microsoft has carried that momentum into its new campaign. And while buzz scores have flattened out over the past five to six days, when the Gates/Seinfeld ads were replaced by the "I'm a PC" ads, Microsoft's buzz levels are still significantly higher than where they were just before the campaign launched.

• paidContent weighs in:The reason [for the Seinfeld / Gates commercials’ success]? All the hate sparked dialogue and interest online.

• Peter Kafka of Silicon Alley Insider proposes:Here's the thing, though: People love watching the horrible, despicable, please-don't-make-us-see-this-anymore Seinfeld/Gates ads.

Other news outlets laid off the analysis, but suggested that the Microsoft campaign wasn’t as bad as everyone thought.

• Meghan Keane of Wired states:It looks like Microsoft got some value out of that $10 million it spent to have Seinfeld shill for the company after all. According to Visible Measures, which charts online video viewing trends, the Microsoft commercials starring Seinfeld have been far more popular than the subsequent "I'm a PC" ads.

• Erin Baker of Contentinople declares:Remember those Jerry Seinfeld/Bill Gates Microsoft ads everybody hated? Well, it turns out no one hated them as much as we thought, at least not according to video tracking service Visible Measures Corp.

What do you think? What drove so many people to the Seinfeld / Gates clips instead of the “I’m a PC” videos? Was it love, hate, curiosity, or something else entirely?