A lot of models about how the influence process works have been proposed such as the Independent Cascade Model (IC Model) and the Linear Threshold Mode (LT Mode). However, they fail to consider the common scenario of viral marketing companies. Motivated by this phenomenon, Long (2014) proposes a new paradigm of viral marketing called Interest-Specified Viral Marketing, where the company can specify which users are of interest when promoting a specific product. To this purpose, we assume that each user in the social network is associated with a set of attribute values and the company can specify the users to be of interest by providing a set AI of attribute values. Consequently, all users that contain some attribute values from AI correspond to the users that are of interest. Note that a user is of interest to a company means that the company has interest in this user (the product of the company is designed for the group of users which includes this user), which further implies that this user would probably be interested in the product. Thus, “user interest” and “company interest” co-exists in our Interest-Specified Viral Marketing paradigm, rendering a more effective marketing strategy because it provides the option to focus on only the truly potential customers (Long, 2014).
However marketers should not just consider the “user interest” factor, but also the type of emotion that will affect the viewer when watching the ad. Shawbel (2013) stated that the key of a successful video is to focus on psychology, not technology. A research by Phelps et al (2004) evaluated that messages that spark strong emotion such as humour, fear, sadness or inspiration are most likely to be forwarded.
via Viral Marketing Campaigns and What Make Users Share Video Ads | Aline Oliveira.