Can Biometrics Predict a Viral Marketing Campaign?

The difference between content that goes viral and content that fails to find an audience depends on a single, critical moment: a person seeing the share button and deciding whether or not to click. Unlocking how to predict what can happen at this point in time would be akin to discovering the holy grail of marketing research. Unfortunately, simply asking people what kind of content they would share doesn’t do a great job of anticipating actual outcomes. However, researchers can utilize physiological markers to measure emotional responses to content to better understand what makes someone click “share.” In a recent study, people were shown a mix of popular and unpopular content and were asked follow-up questions, such as: “Were you engaged in this content? Do you think you would share this?” and so on. By recording an electrophysiological signal called galvanic skin response (GSR), researchers were able to predict the viral outcome of a piece of content significantly better than was possible via any of the usual survey measures.