Unruly’s Social Video Lab Turns Sharing Into A Science

When you walk into Unruly‘s headquarters, it becomes abundantly clear that the social video marketing agency takes the idea of being a ‘lab’ very seriously. Drinks are served out of flasks and beakers, employees occasionally don lab coats and goggles, and there’s an array of tablets displays charts and graphs, each one showing off a neat little nugget of data. It is with this scientific mindset that Unruly’s New York office has launched a Social Video Lab, which uses a large quantity of data to form a prediction about a particular video’s sharability.

The Social Video Lab makes use of Unruly’s ShareRank, an algorithm that incorporates thousands of data points to predict how many shares a branded video will receive. ShareRank’s reported

80% accuracy makes it a valuable tool for companies that want to know how their videos will perform before they even hit the Internet. Unruly COO Sarah Wood explained in further detail how the lab’s predictive power is a huge boon for marketers:

“Creating and distributing shareable content for social media is at the top of the agenda for CMOs, and brands can use the Lab experience to pinpoint exactly what’s trending. Right now, brands are creating controversial, provoking content to fill up the year that has been dubbed ‘#Empty13’. We can advise advertisers how to pounce on the hottest trends before they become mainstream and how they can utilize this insight to generate meaningful paid and earned media.”

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Unruly’s unique methodology and presentation may initially seem silly, but you can’t argue with the results. The company has had a hand in some of the most popular ads in recent memory, including the most shared branded video of 2013, Dove’s ‘Real Beauty’. Clearly, advertisers who want to make a social splash should start donning their goggles.