Creating Online Videos That Engage Viewers
Many companies seek to create online video content that will become popular with consumers. But what are the characteristics of videos that engage consumers?
In the authors’ study of videos that had gone viral, emotionally surprising videos generated liking and views more than any kind of specific content element.
The Holy Grail of modern online marketing is video content that “goes viral,” meaning that it captures an enormous number of views and leads audiences to share, comment or click that they “like” a video. Advertisers, marketing consultants and filmmakers have all ventured theories about what kind of content makes for a hit. The trouble is that the advice varies widely and is even contradictory. Depending on the expert, success is thought more likely if a video is humorous, shocking, dramatic, topical, warm, arousing, angry, scary, socially beneficial, cute, violent, sexy, uplifting, intriguing, quirky, interesting, authoritative, tear-jerking, educational, controversial or baby- and animal-filled.
One of the reasons for the wide range of recommendations is that researchers have often looked at only popular videos. For example, one study that tracked the distribution of videos on Facebook focused only on those that were shared most often, which meant that the researchers did not compare the most popular clips with the content almost no one saw. Nor have marketing scholars reached conclusions about the characteristics of other kinds of popular shared content, despite the vast amount of data now available. One of the more successful papers on viral messages,1 which looked at forwarding behavior in viral email marketing campaigns, suggested that many emotions can play a role, including surprise, joy, sadness and fear. Another study looked at the sharing of New York Times articles and found that still other emotional responses, such as awe and anxiety, also predicted sharing.2
To see if we could clarify some of the contradictions, we decided to take a different approach. Rather than catalog a hodgepodge of content elements found in popular videos, we examined a mix of popular and unpopular videos, then systematically coded and empirically tested the effect of each element on some relatively objective and observational measures of viewer engagement.
First, we gathered a data set of 750 YouTube videos that varied across a wide range of topic categories (including automotive, comedy, gaming and politics) and a wide range of success in gaining viewership. (See “About the Research.�
References (22)
1. While the following paper only considers successful (branded) viral marketing campaigns, it is a serious, systematic effort to understand why sharing occurs; see A. Dobele, A. Lindgreen, M. Beverland, J. Vanhamme and R. van Wijk, “Why Pass on Viral Messages? Because They Connect Emotionally,” Business Horizons 50, no. 4 (July-August 2007): 291-304.
2. J. Berger and K.L. Milkman, “What Makes Online Content Viral?,” Journal of Marketing Research 49, no. 2 (April 2012): 192-205.
