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Why posting to multiple channels drives virality of online videos
Back in the summer of 2012, South Korean pop star Psy released a music video on YouTube. Running at just under four minutes, “Gangnam Style” rapidly became a global sensation. Within just two months of its release, the video was attracting a daily average of nine million viewers. In late September, Guinness World Records confirmed it to be the “most liked” video on YouTube. By December it had become the first piece of content on the platform to garner more than one billion views. As of 2020, the Gangnam Style video has been seen by more than 3.7 billion people around the world. Pys’s official YouTube channel has around 14.1 million followers—a significant user base. But even assuming that each one of these followers had watched the video several times and shared it with others, it still doesn’t account for the sheer volume of views the video has racked up over time. So what’s going on? What is behind the super virality of Gangnam Style and other pieces of content that, like it, appear to defy the rules of probability on the social web? Rajiv Garg, associate professor of information systems & operations management at Emory’s Goizueta Business School, has put a new hypothesis to the test. And he’s found that there’s a clear link between virality and what he calls the “spillover effect” of posting content onto multiple platforms at specific times. “We know that when celebrities and popular figures post videos, there’s likely to be a strong response from their follower base, depending on the content. But over time, user consumption reaches a saturation point—the novelty simply wears off. And this happens around 10 days after a video is posted,” Garg said. “Yet some videos just keep on going, getting successive waves of views on the same platform in quantities that eclipse the follower base. We hypothesized that this is affected by launching on different sites and platforms, but we really wanted to understand the mechanisms behind this and figure out why this activity was occurring on the original platform as well as others—as in the Gangnam case.” Together with Vijay Mahajan (McCombs, UT Austin) and Haris Krijestorac (HEC Paris), Garg looked at the diffusion patterns for viral content on the social web. First analysis confirmed that content sharing by users was the chief primary driver of virality; indeed, views typically increased after a video would appear on a second or third platform. But this didn’t explain why those views were growing back on the original platform too. In fact, the finding ran contrary to the established view that platforms compete for content—that posting to one platform leeches user views from another. “The reasoning until now has been that social platforms cannibalize content. In other words, when you post Gangnam Style onto Vimeo, you’ll get fewer views on YouTube as a result,” Garg said. “Users will move to the other platform and watch it there instead.” But in fact, the opposite was happening. Intrigued, Garg and his coauthors deployed synthetic control—a comparative statistics methodology—to test the causal effects of sharing content to one platform versus posting it to multiple sites. This methodology involved posting 381 viral videos on 26 video-hosting sites. In addition, they ran a randomized field experiment with 30 videos that were randomly seeded onto new platforms at random times. The results across both methods were consistent. Users who were finding the videos once they had been posted to a second (or third, or fourth) platform were still sending viewers to the original platform to view the content. And viewers were coming in droves. “What seems to be happening is that content is going viral as it’s consumed on the original platform—YouTube, say—and then shared to other channels. Here, on the second channel—Vimeo, Daily Motion or others—these videos reach new audiences,” explained Garg. “But for whatever reason, once they’ve discovered the video, many of these new users prefer to go to the original channel and watch it there. And this is happening consistently and in highly significant numbers of users.” This spillover effect could be due to a number of things, says Garg. It could be that for certain audiences, content is simply more readily discoverable on certain platforms—but that these platforms are not the first choice in viewing preferences. It could also be that the content is visible to users but not viewable on the second platform. “Say Gangnam Style is seen on YouTube by a viewer and shared. It then appears on Vimeo, and a second user discovers it; but maybe this user doesn’t like Vimeo or perhaps Vimeo isn’t available in their region or country. What happens then?” noted Garg. “The simple answer is that these new users end up Googling Gangnam Style and find it on YouTube—the original platform. The novelty and virality of the first wave of users has died down, but this new wave of users comes in, creating a spillover effect that boosts the popularity of the video all over again.” Looking again at the results of their analyses, Garg and his colleagues were able to determine that the spillover effect is strongest immediately after a video is introduced onto a secondary platform, as well as at the 18- and 42-day marks. “We analyzed the effect of introducing a video onto a new platform on the increase in views it generates on the original platform over time,” said Garg. “It appears the spillover mechanism is strongest during the first week but experiences spikes later on. In the long-run, we were able to generate twice as many views back on the original platform as we would otherwise have expected. So the effect really is huge.” It is also limited, however. The researchers found diminishing impact in posting content to a succession of different platforms. By the time the video is shared to a fourth or fifth platform, Garg and his coauthors saw no returns. The findings are nonetheless hugely significant for content creators, he says. “We’ve seen that content shared on different platforms sends users back to the original, and that debunks the idea that online channels cannibalize each other’s content,” Garg noted. “And we’re able to say with precision that this effect is strongest during the first week with later spikes, suggesting these may be the best times to introduce content onto new platforms.” Content creators looking to ‘viralize’ their material would do well to take a strategic, omni-channel approach based on these insights, says Garg. Multi-platform sharing is an effective way of spreading word of mouth content and reaching new audience bases—and not just nationally, he stresses. “The effect is not limited to borders or languages. Savvy content creators can create their first ripple on a YouTube or Vimeo and, as the views start falling off, go on to propagate to a second or third channel, including foreign ones,” he said. “The spillover effect is just the same. Staging and staggering your content this way, you reach completely new audiences, many of whom will spill over onto your original platform.” If you are a journalist looking to cover this topic – then let our experts help with your story. Rajiv Garg from Emory’s Goizueta Business School is available to speak with media – simply click on his icon now to arrange an interview today.
Optimizing the delivery speed promise can boost sales
After the coronavirus pandemic forced most of the country into lockdown, online shopping soared. According to CCInsights.org, by the end of April 2020 there was a 146% year-over-year increase in U.S. and Canadian online retail orders. Amazon was so overwhelmed by the combination of increased demand, logistical nightmares, and warehouse worker safety issues that the company announced significant delays in its Amazon Prime shipping speeds. When the company announced it would prioritize the shipping of essential items, the online retailer’s third-party sellers were left to manage their own shipping — something Amazon usually did for them. Shoppers who placed orders for non-essential products at the end of March sometimes received estimated delivery dates of more than a month away. While consumers often received their orders sooner than the 30-day estimate, for Prime shoppers used to getting their items delivered for free the next day, the change in delivery speed was a shock. Amazon shoppers turned to alternative outlets that promised much quicker delivery speeds. Companies with strong e-commerce positions and supply chains, such as Walmart, took advantage of Amazon’s situation. “People are very sensitive to delivery and how fast they can get products,” said Ruomeng Cui, assistant professor in information systems & operations management. “Maybe, just maybe, Amazon would be able to deliver faster than one month, but they chose to promise customers one month — that was their choice.” Unfortunately for Amazon, by setting conservative delivery speed promises, they exacerbated an already bad situation. According to Cui’s paper “Sooner or Later? Promising Delivery Speed in Online Retail” (Ruomeng Cui, Tianshu Sun, Zhikun Lu and Joseph M. Golden), optimizing delivery speed promise can have a substantial effect on a company’s sales. How substantial? Without changing the actual delivery speed itself — only the delivery speed promise — Cui’s research showed that when the retailer promised customers one day faster shipping, sales increased, profits increased, and customers spent more on each order. “It’s a very critical decision for retailers to try to determine how to manage delivery and how to manage the information aspect of delivery,” added Cui. The study is attached and found two key findings: The value of communicating delivery times From a customer satisfaction standpoint, the conservative disclosure lowered customer satisfaction while the aggressive disclosure didn’t affect the company’s satisfaction score, although it did increase product returns when shipping speed was overly aggressive and products were delivered late. “These results indicate that in our research context, promising customers a faster delivery speed can boost sales and profitability but at the cost of a higher product return rate,” the researchers wrote. They go on to caution retailers that promising a conservative shipping speed can be costly. “It’s a careful balance that companies need to think about — how to manage customers’ expectations properly,” explained Cui. Crafting the delivery promise Given online retailers’ adoption of machine learning, Cui believes companies could tweak their algorithms to explore what products and which types of customers are more tolerant to over-promising as it relates to the delivery speed promise. “Companies can then use the analysis to customize and differentiate the types of products that adopt different types of information strategies,” Cui said. “Just change your algorithm, learn and incorporate some of the data-driven decisions and methods.” Going forward, Cui hopes to customize algorithms for companies in an effort to help them dynamically optimize how to promise the correct delivery speed to customers. While many companies, like Collage.com, don’t own their own delivery function and can’t change the actual delivery speed by changing infrastructure, these companies can “manage the information,” said Cui. “It’s easy, and I think it should be the retailer’s responsibility and job to optimize.” “I want to advocate for all retailers to think strategically in their information aspect,” said Cui. “Don’t let such an easily fixed lever just sit there at almost zero cost.” If you are a journalist looking to cover this study or speak with Professor Ciu about subjects like online shopping and operations management, simply click on her icon now to arrange an interview today.
Rob Campbell on why it pays to shake things up
Rob is a mischief-maker and passionately believes in culture, creativity and chaos. He’s worked with names like NIKE, Virgin and Metallica at agencies including Cynic, Wieden+Kennedy and R/GA and has proudly been called an “asshole” by Lars Ulrich, Richard Branson and Dan Wieden. I ask Rob what’s he’s done in his life that has perhaps raised some eyebrows, but that he’s most proud of. He tells us his COVID story, and shares positive insights. We hear how three African American women fundamentally changed his view on the world, and how being exposed to completely different cultures have shaped his life.
Carter Murray on leadership in today’s world
When I was last in New York I met with my friend Carter Murray, Global Chief Executive Officer of FCB, one of the world’s largest global advertising agency networks. Carter oversees the agency’s 120 offices in 80 countries, so as you can imagine, he has a lot to say about leadership. We talked about cultural intelligence and diversity and what makes successful leaders. I ask him how organisational culture has changed, if he still values the same things, and what sort of leaders he’s looking for now.
Researchers urge: Learn from (someone else’s) experience
Measuring your performance as a business is critical. If you want to grow and be successful, you need to understand what you do well—and not so well. To paraphrase a couple of old adages, we all learn from our mistakes and our experience. But in today’s bumpy and fast-changing business landscape, measuring performance can be tough; tougher still if yours is a complex organization or industry. Whatever you’re looking at to gauge your firm’s performance—whether it’s customer satisfaction, say, or repeat purchases—your measures might well be less than perfect. And that’s because of noise—abstruse or unreliable data that makes it hard to unpack key metrics accurately and to learn from them. How successful a firm is in negotiating this performance measure noise depends on how that firm learns, said Kristy Towry, John and Lucy Cook Chair and professor of accounting at Goizueta Business School. She has led a study that looks at the way organizations and the people in them manage their learning. And she finds that we’re way more adept at cutting through the noise when we learn from each other, rather than basing our learning on our own firsthand experience. What the study found: What Towry and her colleagues found was that when there’s a lot of noise in the data we’re working with, our strategic learning is considerably improved when our learning is vicarious—that’s to say, when we learn from each other. This is down to how much of the big picture we see, said Towry. And experiential learning can make us myopic. “We know from psychology and from the results of this study that experiential learning—basing what we learn mainly off our own firsthand experience—can limit us. Experience tends to make us over-focus on what is happening in the here and now or what has just happened. We forget what happened before and don’t build that into our decision-making.” Vicarious learning, on the other hand, helps us to see the bigger picture. “When we’re learning from each other, it’s also experiential, but the learning is augmented by other people’s experience, meaning that we have a broadened perspective," said Towry. "We’re better able to see the big-picture patterns and trends.” When there’s a lot of noise and complexity to negotiate, vicarious learning helps us make better decisions. And this has huge implications for businesses operating in today’s environment. “Our world is not cut and dried at the best of times. Right now we are dealing with the COVID-19 crisis and the fallout on world economies and trade. The business context for most firms operating in this context is very far from stable, so we can assume there’s a lot of complexity and noise affecting our performance indicators. And with so much change afoot, the experiences we are all having in the workplace are what I would call fairly idiosyncratic,” said Towry. “Business leaders should be very aware of this.” To optimize strategic learning and thrive in complexity, firms need to find ways to allow vicarious learning to happen, she said. That means thinking about how to break down barriers to knowledge sharing, be they organizational silos or emerging challenges associated with things like remote working. Sharing information, insight, and understanding is essential. Kristy L. Towry is John and Lucy Cook Chair and Professor of Accounting at Emory University's Goizueta Business School. To learn more about this research or to talk with Kristy – simply click on her icon now to arrange an interview today.
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- During the pandemic, the amount of screen time for many people working and learning from home as well as binge-watching TV has sharply increased. New research finds that wearing blue-light glasses just before sleeping can lead to a better night's sleep and contribute to a better day's work to follow. "We found that wearing blue-light-filtering glasses is an effective intervention to improve sleep, work engagement, task performance and organizational citizenship behavior, and reduced counterproductive work behavior," said Cristiano L. Guarana, assistant professor of management and entrepreneurship at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business. "Wearing blue-light-filtering glasses creates a form of physiologic darkness, thus improving both sleep quantity and quality." Most of the technology we commonly use -- such as computer screens, smartphones and tablets -- emits blue light, which past research has found can disrupt sleep. Workers have become more dependent on these devices, especially as we navigate remote work and school during the coronavirus pandemic. The media have recently reported on the benefits of blue-light glasses for those spending a lot of time in front of a computer screen. This new research extends understanding of the circadian rhythm, a natural, internal process that regulates the sleep-wake cycle and repeats roughly every 24 hours. "In general, the effects of wearing blue-light-filtering glasses were stronger for 'night owls' than for 'morning larks,' said Guarana, who previously has studied how lack of sleep affects business decisions, relationships and other behaviors in organizations. "Owls tend to have sleep periods later in the day, whereas larks tend to have sleep periods early in the day. "Although most of us can benefit from reducing our exposure to blue light, owl employees seem to benefit more because they encounter greater misalignments between their internal clock and the externally controlled work time. Our model highlights how and when wearing blue-light-filtering glasses can help employees to live and work better." The findings appear in the paper, "The Effects of Blue-Light Filtration on Sleep and Work Outcomes," published online by the Journal of Applied Psychology. Guarana is the corresponding author; his co-authors are Christopher Barnes and Wei Jee Ong of the University of Washington. The research found that daily engagement and performance of tasks may be related to more underlying biological processes such as the circadian process. "Our research pushes the chronotype literature to consider the relationship between the timing of circadian processes and employees' performance," the researchers wrote. A good night's sleep not only benefits workers; it also helps their employers' bottom lines. "This study provides evidence of a very cost-effective means of improving employee sleep and work outcomes, and the implied return on investment is gigantic," said Barnes, professor of management and the Evert McCabe Endowed Fellow at the University of Washington's Foster School of Business. "I personally do not know of any other interventions that would be that powerful at that low of a cost." Across two studies, researcher collected data from 63 company managers and 67 call center representatives at Brazil-based offices for a U.S. multinational financial firm and measured task performance from clients. Participants were randomly chosen to test glasses that filtered blue light or those that were placebo glasses. "Employees are often required to work early mornings, which may lead to a misalignment between their internal clock and the externally controlled work time," the researchers said, adding that their analyses showed a general pattern that blue-light filtration can have a cumulative effect on key performance variables, at least in the short term. "Blue-light exposure should also be of concern to organizations," Guarana said. "The ubiquity of the phenomenon suggests that control of blue-light exposure may be a viable first step for organizations to protect the circadian cycles of their employees from disruption." Researchers received no financial support or compensation for this research. The glasses were donated by the Austin, Texas-based company Swanwick.
Continuing to Learn and Explore American History
In the United States, students take several American history courses throughout their K-12 experience. So, why should students bother to continue taking American history courses in college? For Southern Utah University's Dr. Mark Miller, the answer is simple. “When I teach a history course, I am always looking for ways to point out how an issue or event in the past is relevant to something going on in today's world,” said Dr. Miller. “With this year's presidential election going on there have been plenty of examples to tie into regarding past politics and past political crises we have lived through as Americans.” Dr. Miller has conducted some exciting research that will be published in 2021. His upcoming articles includes: “Polygamy under the Red Cliffs: Women’s Voices and Historical Memory at Centennial Park” in Utah Historical Quarterly, “A River Again: Fossil Creek, Desert Fishes, and Dam Removal in the American Southwest” in Pacific Historical Review, and “‘One Territory, Many Peoples:” Racial and Ethnic Groups and the Development of Arizona Territory” in The Smoke Signal. “I think my work on plural marriage and environmental history shows that history is never dead,” said Dr. Miller. “It reveals that in current debates history is quite important. What happened in the past still informs the present. Since both of these topics are quite controversial today, I think historians provide a valuable service by exposing the history behind debates over allowing polygamy in modern America or whether we should make trade offs in development and water use to preserve unique species. Knowledge of people who practice plural marriage and their religious history as well as the history of preservation efforts toward endangered species is vital to all participants in the debates.” Dr. Mark Miller is a professor of history and the department chair of History, Sociology, & Anthropology at Southern Utah University. His research and teaching specialties include United States History, American West, Borderlands, Indigenous Culture and History, World Civilization, and Latin America. He has published articles and books on modern American Indian History, most recently Forgotten Tribes (2006) and Claiming Tribal Identity (2013). He has published articles on race and ethnicity, on indigenous identity and politics in several journals. Dr. Miller is familiar with the media and available for an interview. Simply visit his profile.
Workplaces are changing – and with America adjusting and adapting to the new realities of COVID-19, how teams are managed and how leaders are portrayed is also in a state of evolution. Georgia Southern’s Steven Charlier was recently interviewed by the BBC – and was featured in an article that focused on the differences between leadership skills and how they come across in-person and on-line. “Fifteen years ago, Steven Charlier, chair of management at Georgia Southern University in the U.S., had a hunch that in-person charisma and leadership skills don’t translate virtually. “Before I became an academic, I worked for IBM for a number of years on a lot of virtual teams,” he says. “I had a boss who was a wonderful guy and great manager, and he drove me crazy trying to communicate. He was incredibly slow and unresponsive.” This seed of professional vexation has borne fruit, with new data showing that the confidence, intelligence and extroversion that have long propelled ambitious workers into the executive suite are not enough online, because they simply don’t translate into virtual leadership. Instead, workers who are organised, dependable and productive take the reins of virtual teams. Finally, doers lead the pack – at least remotely. Georgia Southern’s Charlier is not surprised to find a wide gulf between the behaviors of in-person and remote leaders. “In any leadership role, you’ve got to establish that trust. It’s trusting that the person is going to do things,and trusting that they’re telling the truth and being up front and honest. But how you go about doing that virtually is a little different – it’s a different skill set.” This is a fascinating topic and one that will be top of mind as America begins a new era of remote working. And if you are a journalist looking to follow up on this topic – then let our experts help. Steven Charlier is an expert in project management and virtual teams on project-based work and how technology influences how we work and lead within organizations. He’s available to speak with media about this very interesting topic – simply click on his icon to arrange an interview.
The spotted lanternfly, an invasive species native to China, India and Vietnam, arrived in Pennsylvania in 2014. It is only over the past couple years, however, that the insect has gained particular notoriety. This year, the presence of spotted lanternflies has drastically increased in eastern Pennsylvania, and these pesky bugs can have dangerous effects. According to Villanova University professor of biology Vikram Iyengar, PhD, "The spotted lanternflies are back and showing no signs of going away. In fact, 12 new counties in Pennsylvania were added to the quarantine zone in 2020, which indicates that the invasive insects are spreading westward within the state." This quarantine prevents the travel of any spotted lanternflies through landscaping waste, firewood, plants and more. Reducing the spread via quarantine is vital to minimize agricultural harm, including damage to fruit-bearing trees. (Spotted lanternflies pose a considerable threat to grape and wine production throughout the country.) Per Dr. Iyengar, "The state of Pennsylvania is devoting a lot of resources to figure this out, and there have been some successes—for example, New York still has not reported spotted lanternflies, which indicates that the Pennsylvania quarantine has been somewhat effective. But there is still no solution yet." So, what's the answer? Dr. Iyengar notes that the possibility of a predator species will not combat the issue. Instead, "they will need to find some special pheromone or chemical that selectively lures spotted lanternflies into traps." Having a harsh winter this year is also key. "The fact that we had such a mild winter last year probably meant that more eggs were able to withstand the winter," said Dr. Iyengar. "A harsh winter may be our best hope, so the persistence of the spotted lanternfly may be yet another negative consequence of climate change." Another invasive species currently being tracked in Pennsylvania is the emerald ash borer. Villanova's R. Kelman Wieder, PhD, studies plant biology and believes these insects, which kill ash trees, are the next big threat to plant life in Pennsylvania. "I have lots of ash trees in my woods and they all are dead or dying," said Dr. Wieder. "My house was built in the 1830s and the huge ash tree was as old as my house." But Dr. Wieder isn't too worried. "Are we doomed? Well, yes and no. Eastern deciduous forests have been radically changed in the past by the chestnut blight and Dutch elm disease, yet we still have forests." That said, he still has some concerns for the future. "On top of this, deer munch on young trees," added Dr. Wieder. "So many Pennsylvania forests are deficient in young trees. So, in 50 to 100 years, what will happen?"
The Legacy of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court
"With her passing, feminist icon and jurist Ruth Bader Ginsburg leaves a legacy in both her formal role as a Supreme Court justice and author of some of the most important legal opinions during her service as well as her advocacy for gender equity," says Teresa Boyer, EdD, founding director of Villanova University's Anne Welsh McNulty Institute for Women's Leadership. In her personal and professional life, Ginsburg created a map for women to be the equals of the most powerful leaders in our nation. "By all accounts she was a brilliant legal mind, and from the start of her career she leveraged that mind to fight for the rights of those she felt were denied them, especially women," says Dr. Boyer. "Despite her decidedly liberal stance, she held a close personal friendship with her strongest conservative opposition on the Supreme Court, Antonin Scalia. Even with their intellectual differences, they held each other as equals, respecting each other's work. In a time when cross-gender friendships were rare, especially where a woman was as powerful as a man, Ginsburg once again showed that gender needn't dictate one's status in life." "Although Sandra Day O'Connor was the first woman to sit on the nation's highest court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the one that became a literal feminist icon," notes Dr. Boyer. "Ginsburg was unapologetically fierce in her opinions, both legal and otherwise. It is this ferocity which earned her the status 'Notorious RBG.' Especially in the early days of Ginsburg's career (and some would argue even today), women could hold opinions, but to be fierce and unapologetic about them was distinctly unfeminine." The images of Ginsburg wearing her lace collar, lipstick and jewelry were a deliberate contrast, owning her femininity at the same time she owned her power. "That iconic image will be upheld for decades to come—and I suspect a run on black robes and lace collars for Halloween this year," says Dr. Boyer.
