GEICO Hump Day Ad Dominates Social Video... on Wednesdays

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A new report published today by Unruly Media found a pattern with the sharing activity of GEICO’s "Hump Day" that represents a significant opportunity for marketers on other days of the week. The report also found that online video ad shares have increased by 7 percent in the second quarter of 2013, despite a stellar performance by branded ad campaigns at the Super Bowl in Q1.

Let’s start with the "GEICO Hump Day Camel Commercial - Happier than a Camel on Wednesday." It currently has more than 6.1 million views and over 1.6 million shares.

"GEICO displayed a stroke of social video genius by making an ad that speaks to that feeling we all have on Wednesday, when we have got through half of the working week," said Ian Forrester, Unruly’s Insight Director. "The ad is unusual in that it has enjoyed a peak in shares every Wednesday since launch, continuing to spread GEICO’s message long after a normal ad’s social interactions would have largely diffused 2 weeks following launch, according to Unruly’s Social Diffusion Curve."

David Waterhouse, Unruly’s Head of Content and PR, provides the GEICO stats below, which show the percentage of shares of "Hump Day" for each day of the week. He said, "We pulled the data today, and to be honest, it's better than I thought, with 67.3 percent of the 1.64 million shares it has attracted so far occurring on Wednesdays."

• Monday - 2.6 percent
• Tuesday - 3.5 percent
• Wednesday - 67.3 percent
• Thursday - 16.7 percent
• Friday - 4.0 percent
• Saturday - 3.1 percent
• Sunday - 2.8 percent

Waterhouse also shared the chart below showing the humps every Wednesday:

Waterhouse added, "Pretty cool stuff, right? But has it ever happened before? Well, I can only think of one video which have also attracted such significant peaks and troughs consistently on a particular day. The first, and I am sorry to bring this up, is Rebecca Black’s annoyingly-catchy music video "Friday".

To get an idea of how big an opportunity this represents for other marketers, ClickZ's sister plublication, SEW, did some keyword research using Google Trends. 

Web search interest in the keyword, Wednesday, peaks on Wednesdays. And web search interest in the keyword, Friday, peaks on Fridays. And the pattern continues for the other five days of the week.

Some marketer is going to create a video ad featuring a funny animal making fun of Cyber Monday, Fat Tuesday, Maundy Thursday, Saturday Night Live or the Sunday Times. Or, some brand will license "Monday, Monday" by the Mamas and Papas, "Ruby Tuesday" by The Rolling Stones, "Thursday" by THE WEEKEND, "Saturday, Saturday" by Indeep Bakshi, or "Sunday Morning" by Maroon 5 as the background music for their next video ad and watch it turn into viral video gold.

Record-Breaking April in Video Ad Shares

Meanwhile, Unruly also reported that a record-breaking April was the main reason for the surprising increase in video ad shares in Q2. For the first time ever, three ads launched within the same month made it on to the top 20 most shared ads chart of all time – Dove’s "Real Beauty Sketches", Evian’s "Baby & Me", and Kmart’s "Ship My Pants".

Compiled using Unruly Analytics, the report shows that sharing of branded content grew 7 percent in the second quarter of 2013, increasing to 33,287,836 shares from the first quarter. Although Entertainment once again took top spot as the most shared sector, CPG/FMCG also performed well, growing shares by +10.3 percent, from a very strong base that was boosted by Super Bowl sharing in Q1 2013 (+78.2% from Q4 2012).

CPG/FMCG’s performance in Q2 was fuelled by two ads, Dove’s "Real Beauty Sketches" and Evian’s "Baby & Me", which together made up 21.4% of total shares for the quarter and placed them 3rd and 11th in the all-time global ads chart, respectively.

"Even without the assistance of the Super Bowl, we saw ads in almost every sector share grow in terms of sharing," said Forrester. "It shows brands can make it big outside of the Super Bowl."

Here’s how the rest of the sectors stacked up:

Entertainment Continues to Engage in Q2:

• Once again, Entertainment was the best performing vertical of Q2 2013, with 11,006,892 shares (33.1% of all content);
• Warner Bros’s "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6DJcgm3wNY">Man of Steel" trailer was the stand out hit, with an impressive 1,137,393 shares.

CPG/FMCG Comes A Close Second:

• CPG/FMCG was the second strongest vertical in Q2 2013, with 9,556,831 shares;
• In addition to the runaway hits from Dove and Evian, Nivea Germany’s Mother’s Day ad campaign, "Mama" (288,238 shares), also performed strongly.

Tech Holds Steady in Third:

• Tech performed the third strongest, attracting 17.8 percent of the total number of shares from Q2 (5,912,246), up 1.6 percent from the previous quarter;
• The strongest Tech video was Sony’s Microsoft-mocking "Used Game Instructional Video".

Retail Beats Out Autos for Fourth:

• Retail showed huge growth in Q2 2013 (+218.6 percent), catapulting it ahead of Autos for the first time this year, thanks to two ads from Kmart – "Ship My Pants" and "Big Gas Savings".

Auto Stalls Out in Q2:

• Autos performance dropped significantly (-67.3 percent) from Q1 2013;
• With only one truly strong video (Audi’s "The Challenge") emerging, shares in Q2 2013 totalled 1,048,078.

To download a copy, visit: Unruly white papers.

This article was originally published on Search Engine Watch.