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Marketers Axing Underperforming Viral Campaigns

Only 15 percent of viral campaigns in the last year successfully prompted consumers to promote the marketer’s message, according to a new report from JupiterResearch (via MediaPost). That low response rate may be leading to the decrease in the use of viral tactics: marketers plan to scale back on their use of viral marketing by 55 percent within the next year.

The lack of strong results may be due to the fact that marketers tend to send the same message to all influentials, when higher responses would come from a more targeted campaign, says Jupiter analyst Emily Riley. “Different influential groups not only respond very differently to advertising campaigns, but also influence others in very different ways.”

For example, “relatively older” online users are more likely than “relatively younger” users to forward advertising messages to friends, or to tell friends about ads. Older users are also more likely to use email and watch video, while younger users tend to flock to social networks.