Australians are the fastest sharers of viral videos in the world, but our reasons to share different from global trends.
The average branded video campaign in Australia attracts 21% of its total shares in the first 24 hours - much higher than the global average of 13%.
That's according to Unruly, which has run the numbers in Australia ahead of its ShareRank product launch in Sydney today.
Taking two trillion video views and combining them with 395,000 consumer data points, Unruly has come up with the numbers for the Australian market.
While 21% of videos that are shared are done so within 24 hours, just 2.9% of branded videos are shared, and this is up from 0.9% in April 2014.
Unruly's research found a small proportion of people are responsible for the lion's share of video shares.
A total of 18% of the Aussie population accounts for 80% of total video shares in Australia.
Why and how are we sharing?
Happiness is the most common emotional sharing trigger for Aussie video campaigns according to Unruly, followed by inspiration and warmth. In the UK and US, the most common emotional triggers are happiness and hilarity.
Getting a strong emotional reaction to a video in Australia, however, is harder than the rest of the world, with ads 7% less likely to evoke intense emotional responses than the global average.
Given that an emotional response is seen as key to the decision to share a video, marketers seemingly have a task on their hand to cut through to Australians.
“Emotions are at the heart of good content, not just from a shareability perspective but the fact that emotional content cuts through the clutter and gets remembered – being remembered is vital for sales,” director at the University of South Australia's Centre for Digital Video Intelligence Dr Karen Nelson-Field said.
The most common social motivation to share a video online in Australia is to seek other people’s opinions. Unruly also said if we do share for emotional reasons, it's likely to be about happiness, followed by inspiration and warmth.
Australians share less on Facebook and Twitter than the global average, but more on Google+, Tumblr, email and StumbleUpon.
Speaking to AdNews previously, Unruly’s Australia & New Zealand managing director, Lance Traore, said that the length of a video was becoming increasingly irrelevant in whether it's shared or not.
“In the ADD [attention deficit disorder] society we have, everyone is talking about snackable content and people's patience is wearing thin,” Traore said.
“But at the same time we’re seeing that in order to drive and engage viewers, brands need more time. We we looked at purely ads that had been shared year on year, we're actually seeing the average length of the most shared ad is increasing, and that number is purely based on big data.”
The opportunity in shared video in Australia, according to Unruly, is huge.
Australians are more likely to engage with video campaigns than a lot of other countries around the world, with click-through rates of 37%, interaction of 15% and complete rates of 1%, all higher than the global averages.
Australian social video campaigns drove an average uplift in brand favourability of 80% versus the global average of 47%.
“Brands and creative agencies in Australia understand there is life beyond the 30-second TV commercial and that making more emotional digital content drives deeper connections with consumers who will go on to share and buy their products or services,” Traore said.
The ad tech company will tell marketers and agencies today that by using its tech, they will be able to work out the earned media potential of their video ad before they've spent one dollar on media.
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