Viral Ads as One of the Advertising Formats of the Age in Digital Media

Digital environments have enabled individuals who were previously passive consumers to become active producers. With its interactive structure, digital platforms allow individuals to communicate and relate to each other, socialize, learn, teach, and shop; In short, it has become an area where they can perform most of their daily life practices. These environments are also heavily used by commercial and non-commercial organizations. Commercial or non-commercial persons, institutions, or organizations that want to contact and catch their consumers; exist in digital environments where consumers spend a significant part of their time. To be able to coincide with their consumers, they take part in the digital channels they are in and thus they have a dialogic communication. Advertising, which was only one way from traditional media tools in the past, has also been affected by this environment and various current reflections have emerged. One of these reflections is viral advertising.

Viral advertising, without the purchase of space and time from the media, is one of the traditional advertising definitions; It is based on the dissemination of the said advertising messages in digital media. In other words, they are advertisements performed by the consumers of the advertisers as a result of the fast, practical, versatile, and dialogic structures of digital media. Just like the spread of a contagious disease, advertisements spread by consumers in digital environments are called viral advertisements. In viral advertising, the source of advertising is the consumers themselves. As brand ambassadors, they share their advertising content. Consumers can see this function on the basis that the content is worth sharing. In other words, viral advertising is about the existence of motivating and shareable content for consumers to share with other individuals in digital environments.

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