The value of having one of your videos go viral is hard to measure accurately but there’s no doubt it’s a huge boon for your brand. To get that kind of spread is hard to achieve though, you could make hundreds of videos all designed to go viral and get nowhere. On the other hand, you can make one video where your star accidentally injures himself and end up going viral overnight. The problem is that you rarely can fake it. The internet has a good nose for the authenticity and can smell someone trying too hard from a mile away. But what if you could pay to go viral? Would it be worth the boost to your automotive marketing efforts?

A new company, aptly named Buyral, is offering to make your videos go viral for pennies a view. Check out their promo below.

Did you watch the video? Great. It seems reasonable enough for the first minute or so, but it becomes quickly apparent that the company is just a joke. It does carry a lesson for us though.

It’s too easy to get caught up in raw numbers and start valuing them over substance. Say you have a new car video up and pay for a million views; it would be incredibly tempting to do so. In the end, you’d have something impressive to show off to the boss or client, but no actual value. Without real people enjoying the video, talking about the video, and sharing the video, viral is nothin’ but a number baby.

This is similar to what we’ve seen on social media with people buying likes or followers or +1s or whatever other metric of popularity you want to cite. Getting a thousand extra fans overnight is great on paper, but it’s nothing without community engagement. Unless you’re using those purchased fans as a springboard to foster a REAL audience, you’re just wasting your time.

So watch the video. It truly does a great job at illustrating just how empty purchased engagement can be. Not to mention it’s pretty funny!

Original article about Buyral can be found at Wikimotive's Blog titled Paying to go Viral.