Blog 10: Viral Marketing on YouTube

I’m very familiar with viral marketing. I see a lot of it on YouTube, specifically. Creators on YouTube will advertise products or websites at the end or beginning of their videos. However, some people will do this merely for the money aspect and not because they genuinely believe what they’re advertising is a good product. This decreases the “personal” aspect of viral marketing and rather turns it into just another product placement. Viral marketing works best when people advertise a product they would actually use. Not only do they get to promote a product they deem worthy of recognition, but they get paid to do so and in that get to create more quality videos for their viewers. Another form of viral marketing I see a lot on YouTube especially are viral ads. These show up before YouTube videos and are often not even about the product. Advertisements these days are more geared towards getting the watcher to watch for longer than a 5 second rather than advertising their product. Ads have started to become skits with the product only showing up within the last few seconds of the video. Viral marking (also called “stealth marketing” on Wikipedia) uses “marketing strategies that advertise a product to people without them knowing they are being marketed to.” As evil as it sounds, it’s a brilliant tactic.