(Originally posted at the Viral Ad Network blog)
Everybody likes to think their viral creatives are going to go viral without any kind of push – but here’s the bottom line:
| No Media Spend | Media Spend | |
|---|---|---|
| Asset Production | -£20K | -£20K |
| Media Spend | -£0.00 | -£7.5K |
| Total Cost | -£20K | -£27.5K |
| Organic Views(Worst case) | 1000 | 1000 |
| Organic Views(Best case) | 500,000 | 500,000 |
| Bought Views | 0 | 50,000 |
| Total Views (Best case) | 500,000 | 550,000 |
| Total Views (Worst case) | 1000 | 51,000 |
| Cost Per View (Best case) | -£0.04 | -£0.05 |
| Cost Per View (Worst case) | -£20 | -£0.539 |
Summary:
How much would you enjoy reporting to your client to tell them their average cost per view was £20? (even if you don’t phrase it like that, they will be calculating it).
Including a bought spend reduces their (and your) risk – in very worst case above you’d be entering that meeting reporting an average cost per view of around 1/40th of that price – that’s 40 times more ROI for them, and a more economically viable campaign.
What’s missing from the above?
Quite a bit – for a start, the more that your content is seen, the more likely it is to get organic views – so a bought media buy makes it far less likely that you’ll be hitting anywhere close to the worst case. For simplicity I’ve left this at the most basic calculation I could.
(Disclaimer: these numbers are estimated and may not necessarily reflect real-life results, which will depend on individual campaigns)
