Unruly Launches Tool to Predict Viral Success

Today, Unruly Media, keeper of the ever popular Viral Video Chart, has unleashed a tool that is said to offer advertisers the ability to predict the viral success of videos.

Unruly's ShareRank promises to help advertisers optimize their content by determining, in advance, how much earned media they can expect to see.

Advertisers who use the predictive tool will gain insight into the psychological, social and content triggers that affect the success of their video content as well as learn the word of mouth potential of their video before they spend anything on media.

The algorithm has been developed over 6 months at the Unruly Social Video Lab by the company's team of statisticians who have mapped a variety of sources into one solution to predict social video success. These include:

Technology: The Unruly Viral Video Chart uses proprietary social tracking technology, which has been collating video sharing data for seven years and now stores data from over 300 billion video streams;

Academic research: Collaboration with leading academics, particularly Dr Karen Nelson-Field, of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science, on the key variables that drive video sharing;

Consumer data: Analysis of thousands of consumer panel responses, measuring their emotional and social reactions and motivations to share video content.

The Holy Grail of viral video advertising? Time will tell but any predictive help has to be valuable in the pot shot world of viral markering.